There’s a strain bred into Toronto’s character that says we can’t have nice things — that we shouldn’t have nice things, in fact. It’s an old Protestant working-class sensibility, fading slowly but still present, that thinks anything even a little bit fancy is suspect, that any display of pride or quality or playfulness is a symptom of a headstrong striver trying to move above its natural station.

Maybe fun and beautiful and well-made things are good for some cities. Your regal Parises and Romes, your powerful New Yorks and Tokyos, your larger-than-life Chicagos; places you visit on vacation or business, places you see on postcards and in the movies. Those cities, sure, they do things properly, build things right, spend the money needed to make things nice. But those nice things are not for the likes of us. The likes of us take pride in our chipped knock-off china, our threadbare sofa patched with duct-tape and darning thread, our dollar-store decor. If it’ll do, it’ll do for us.

That sensibility was there in laws that, for generations, made bars black out their windows, lest anyone be seen enjoying themselves. It is there in the islands ferry terminal, the only entrance to our stunning public parkland resort, built to look and feel like the courtyard of a prison. It was there in our refusal to repair the light sculpture Arc en ciel at Yorkdale subway station in the 1990s by replacing some $28 transformers — better to put it in storage (where it remains today).

It’s even there in our incremental approaches over time to renovating Union Station — the grand family heirloom of the Great Hall now barely used, reserved for entertaining a few out-of-town guests, while local daily commuters are herded through a utilitarian underground maze of tunnels and fast-food franchise holding pens.

This aspect of our civic character is in a constant tug-of-war with a directly opposing trait, marked by the desire to prove we’ve made it with ostentatious Certified World Class™ status symbols: The tallest freestanding structure in the world! The world’s first functional retractable-roof multi-purpose sports and entertainment facility! Rotating highrise restaurants!

It’s a see-saw battle. Only occasionally do Torontonians find the happy middle between the belligerently parsimonious and the vulgarian spendthrift parts of our character: the City Hall buildings (old and new), the R.C. Harris water treatment facility, the acreage of High Park. They are nice — nicer than they have to be — but they are also enduringly functional and over time, have come to be treasured.

I was thinking about all this as the work and mandate of Waterfront Toronto came up for debate at City Hall recently. The joint federal-provincial-municipal agency charged with steering redevelopment of the lake front has almost finished with the first phase of its mandate and the first chunk of its funding, and a decision on whether to give it authority to borrow money against its assets and support renewing its authority was before city council’s executive committee.

It’s major showpiece public-space projects from phase one — Corktown Common, Sherbourne Common, Sugar Beach, Underpass Park, the redesign of Queens Quay — have drawn equal parts criticism and adoration.

On the one hand, there are those concerned that it is all too fancy — Look at those pink umbrellas! Why pave a sidewalk with granite stones? Do the likes of us really need these rolling hills? Do we deserve them?

On the other hand, there are breathless admirers, in a way the flip side of the same coin. Look how stunning! How beautiful! Is it possible we actually did something this grand in Toronto? How did we pull it off?

Listening to either end of the discussion, you’d think we’d gone out and bought a Rolls-Royce, or a Lamborghini. But visiting the Waterfront projects, I see neither. They look to me more like the urban development equivalent of a Volvo: nice but not extravagant, practical, durable, and more stylish than fashionable.

They look like what they are supposed to be: the well-designed cornerstone spaces that will anchor neighbourhoods still being planned and built; places that will serve as landmark amenities drawing residents and businesses, and will serve both as points of interest for visitors from across the city (and points beyond) and practical daily use for neighbours.

In doing that so far, Waterfront Toronto has achieved that rare Toronto feat of balance: building places that are high-quality and beautiful without being ridiculous or gimmicky or overtly showy. And they did it on the lake shore, a location that was for decades marked by grinding inaction punctuated by the periodic construction of expensive white elephants and fire-sale cheap sell-offs to private developers.

On Tuesday, the executive committee voted in a preliminary decision to support Waterfront Toronto (while also commissioning a value-for-money audit to alleviate the suspicions of nagging misers) into its next phase. City council can be expected to confirm that decision next week.

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Somehow the agency overseeing what might be the largest development project in North America has so far dodged the meddling of the longstanding dominant factions of Toronto’s character, the whining of the stingy and the hijacking of the overzealous. Maybe, just maybe, the likes of us can have nice things after all.

Edward Keenan writes on city issues ekeenan@thestar.ca . Follow: @thekeenanwire

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