Mixed blessings

Walking home after a dinner with friends in inner city Toronto, I pass a busy movie set. There are technicians, large and small vans with electrical cabling criss-crossing the street, a hum of generators and the glare of floodlights.

The film stars Nicholas Cage, and this evening two scenes are being shot - one inside a bar and another of a street chase. Toronto is the setting for many Hollywood movies, chiefly because it offers lower production costs, has experienced film production teams and - perhaps unflatteringly - it's great for doubling as a generic US city.

The truth is Toronto's anything but generic. Wrapped comfortably around the northwestern shores of Lake Ontario, it is Canada's largest city and its main financial centre. As the provincial capital of Ontario, Toronto is also an important political and cultural base with a cosmopolitan population of more than five million.

While the city attracted negative attention last week as the host of the G20 conference, with about 900 people arrested for rioting, Toronto is usually known for being laid-back.

The city has changed a lot since I lived there 20 years ago. Its skyline now has innovative examples of world-class architecture. Among buildings of note is the new Royal Ontario Museum, designed by Studio Daniel Libeskind of Berlin. With its jagged facade and narrow non-linear windows, it contrasts sharply with the rectilinear forms of nearby buildings.

Another eye-catching structure is the Sharp Centre for Design, at the Ontario College of Art & Design, by architect Will Alsop. The building, raised on angular steel columns high above the campus, appears as a black and white checked block. It's a playful and abstract building within the context of its more traditional surrounds, and it exudes a notion of whimsy.