Feeling inadequate

CN Tower: It was a good run.

TORONTO LIKES TO consider itself “world class.” As the rest of Canada keeps a careful eye trained on the nation’s largest city – seemingly always ready to attack T.O. for being arrogant and self-centered, uptight and stressed-out, cold and impersonal etc. – Toronto looks farther afield in search of validation. It seeks affirmation that it’s counted among the world’s top cities.

So it’s no small matter that Toronto’s 34-year-old landmark, the CN Tower, recently lost its designation in the Guinness Book of World Records as the “tallest free-standing structure.” That distinction now belongs to the 816-metre Burj Dubai.

For the moment, Toronto’s iconic 553-metre needle still has a claim to fame: world’s tallest freestanding tower. Sadly, this won’t last long. In the next two years, two buildings – the Tokyo Sky Tree in Japan, and the Guangzhou TV & Sightseeing Tower in China – will bump the CN Tower off, leaving it with only a couple of rather dubious claims: the highest wine cellar (the tower has a revolving restaurant in its observation deck) and the tallest free-standing concrete tower.

Ah well, things change, nothing stays the same, and three decades is a good run for the CN Tower. Anyway, I’m not sure building a bigger skyscraper means that much these days.

In Asia and the Middle East, massive towers seem to pop up every year with little fanfare. Indeed, nine of the 10 tallest skyscrapers currently under development are in that part of the world; only one, the new World Trade Center in New York, is in North America.

That’s great for them, but it just doesn’t seem to generate the same excitement as, say, the competition between the Chrysler Building and Empire State Building back in the 1930s, when New Yorkers waited with bated breath to see which would ultimately prevail as the tallest (the Empire State Building, 102 storeys).

I wonder if these places will view their new towers with pride. I’m more inclined to think big buildings have lost their cachet. What’s so significant about some super-tall skyscraper if it’s overtaken the next year by an even taller one?

Burj: Bigger, harder – but won't last as long.

And let’s be honest: there are serious phallic undertones in all this building-size talk. Think about it: Toronto has long boasted about our big tower. But now we’re being made to feel inadequate by a city well-endowed with an even bigger one, the Burj Dubai – a structure made of steel, therefore harder than the CN Tower, too.

At the rate which tower records crumble nowadays, though, at least we can take comfort in one thing: the Burj won’t last as long.

ryan@roadtostarrdom.com