[Ramako]

It's that conservative and understated nature that helped our banking sector, and as a result, our economy, sail through the recession, and thereby maintained and extended the building boom for the last 3 years.

In other words, we're getting quantity over quality. To some degree, I think that it's necessary step, for the following reason. Some may not remember but prior to this current boom, downtown Toronto was absolutely littered with parking lots and brownfields. As a result land was relatively cheap and it didn't take much for a developer to turn a profit. Today, downtown Toronto is far more built out. There are only a handful of empty lots remaining and developers have started to turn toward demolishing underbuilt lots. As a result, the cost of land is rising in Toronto. Accordingly in order to turn a healthy profit developers either have to go even taller or bring a higher end product to the table.

So far the former has been the dominant choice, but it faces an inevitable limit. While people lament the design of Ten York or 90 Harbour, a decade ago they'd have likely been fawned over. Design is improving. The trouble is that we've seen those kinds of designs so much already that we've come to view them as typical and run-of-the-mill. Of course, people's expectations move faster than reality.

Now you're starting to see more projects like Theatre Park, Exhibit, Picasso, Monde, the Gansevoort Distillery tower, 100 Adelaide, Massey Tower and the upcoming Bjarke Ingels project. Not world shakers, but bolder than anything else in Toronto. We're growing up... slowly.