Urban expressways are one of the defining features of a city's landscape. This is especially the case for elevated expressways that extend traffic upwards, and cars can be seen zig-zagging around skyscrapers. In Toronto, there are a handful of highways that run in and around the city, but the Frederick G. Gardiner is by far the most prominent. It has been called “the largest and least known civic presence in Toronto”. Following the ignition of the post-war automobile industry, the Gardiner was built at a time when the car was deemed a right rather than luxury.
Today the expressway hides in plain sight as the rest of the city rapidly develops around it. Mimicking the shoreline, it weaves through commercial, industrial, and residential areas. The expressway spans 18 kilometres in length and is elevated in sections as high as six storeys. It occupies more than 60 acres of land, not including another 100 acres of land adjacent to it. As part of its 2021-2030 transportation strategy, Toronto accommodates nearly half its budget of $2 billion in rehabilitation alone, making it one of the most expensive assets of the city.
Today the expressway hides in plain sight as the rest of the city rapidly develops around it. Mimicking the shoreline, it weaves through commercial, industrial, and residential areas. The expressway spans 18 kilometres in length and is elevated in sections as high as six storeys. It occupies more than 60 acres of land, not including another 100 acres of land adjacent to it. As part of its 2021-2030 transportation strategy, Toronto accommodates nearly half its budget of $2 billion in rehabilitation alone, making it one of the most expensive assets of the city.
The Gardiner functions as an exploration of the changing perception of urban idealism. Born out of a desire to equate cars to the force of airplanes and Toronto to other metropolitans, the expressway serves a long-term quest to transform the landscape of Toronto into one that is utopian. The images invite the viewer to indulge in its mass and beauty, and at the same time, consider the inevitable collapse as decades pass and pillars crumble. Over time the expressway has become an eyesore of frustration for Toronto, hindering the vast improvements that the city desires but struggles to balance due to its constant costly maintenance. Together, the photographs work to examine the past, present, and future of the expressway's life. By using the highway as a subject, the series functions as an exercise in considering the permanence of how we choose to design and define our cities.
© Brileigh Hardcastle, 2022