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That is one cool bridge. For months, nothing seemed to happen at the pedestrian bridge construction site near the Iowa Events Center, and you had to wonder if somebody had lost the blueprints. Then all of a sudden, a sleek white arch shot across the sky, and we had another notable bridge. The best one yet.

The blue arches marking walkways over the freeway are terrific. The arch-enhanced bridge taking Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway over the Raccoon River was a great leap forward. For that matter, the pedestrian bridge at Gray’s Lake is pretty nice.

But this Riverwalk design tops them all, bidding for your attention with the long curve overhead, then raising the stakes with a walkway that curves sideways. It’s not just a way to get from one side of the Des Moines River to the other; it combines geometry with strolling, algebra with exercise.

It’s what you would get more of, if you sent engineers to art school.

The only drawback is that you can’t properly appreciate it if you’re driving through town on Interstate 235. A driver who pays attention to the roadway – not a common occurrence, but it still happens – will get just a glimpse of a white bow and never feel the full effect. It’s like sprinting past the Mona Lisa.

But then, maybe it’s time for out-of-town drivers to make sure they get off the freeway and look around downtown.

In the old, old days, the high point of visiting downtown Des Moines was marveling over the lofty peak of the Equitable Building. In the less old days, the biggest thrill was … I don’t know, maybe beating a yellow light.

Now we can contend that a drive through our little downtown is like a visit to an art exhibition.

A few blocks west of the white bridge, the Nomade sculpture has returned home. The human form made of letters was missed, and I’m glad we got it back without losing any of the pieces.

Now it’s joined by the array of sculptures that were so generously given to the city by John and Mary Pappajohn, and this is something that should persuade lots of visitors to get out of their cars for a closer look.

Not all of us will “get” all of those artworks. For us lay folks, it can be hard to spot that fine line between postmodern sculpture and vocational technology.

Still, having a sculpture park next door to our copper-colored downtown library identifies us as a city that thinks big and appreciates creativity.

But the Principal Riverwalk bridge is my favorite piece of them all, because it’s more than just good-looking. A great bridge makes a statement about how humans spend their time on this modest little planet. We don’t just try to score victories over nature, which would get us wet and muddy, shake us, strike us with lightning and cover us with volcanic ash every day if it could; we like to do it in big, impressive ways.

The bridge experienced a dramatic moment of humanity before it hosted its first pedestrian. In one day, Greater Des Moines lost a citizen, Alan Neely, to drowning right there at the Center Street Dam, but also witnessed a rescue that was seen around the world. They might as well mail a Pulitzer Prize to Des Moines Register photographer Mary Chind right now, because the shot of bridge builder Jason Oglesbee swooping down like Spider-Man to rescue Patricia Ralph-Neely may have been the best front-page photo ever.

We probably won’t attach that memory to the bridge, though. It will stand on its own.

In Great Britain, the Gateshead Millennium Footbridge connects the cities of Gateshead and Newcastle across the River Tyne. It also has an overhead arch and a walkway arch. Technologically, it surpasses ours, because the whole structure rotates to raise the walkway and allow boats to pass underneath. Fantastic.

But ours is better in one important respect. It’s here.