Composition is the key to any photo. I try to remember this at all times, telling myself, "this isn't a photo of a bridge, it's a photo of a curved line. How can I get that curved line to look its best?"
With that in mind, in photo 1 you have three main compositional elements to me: a receding diagonal line (the terraced houses), a vertical line (the tower) and a black space (the right side of the photo). The black space isn't doing anything useful so it should go. Put the tower at the far right of the photo with the terrace leading to it: that's your composition. I would take from a lower vantage point too, it seems you're quite high up, are you standing on a ladder?
Try and get more foreground and more symmetry to the receding terrace so it leads the eye down to the tower.
The second - seems like it's taken with a telephoto, giving a compressed feeling of space. There's really no compositional sense here, just an image - for instance, the traffic lights are floating around the bottom, the car is cut in half, and the perspective on the bridge isn't flattering. Needless to say the tonemapping makes no difference to the composition and therefore doesn't improve the photo. That sort of stuff is just a distraction if the underlying image needs improving. Decide what you're actually taking a photo of - is it the road, the cars, or the bridge? I would say there's a good image to be made of the bridge, but get down there with a wide angle and fill the frame!
See the results of the reshoot next week?