Hot off the presses, Heritage Toronto is pleased to announce the release of the State of Heritage Report today, following a year of research, consultations, and engagement with 58 community organizations and over 500 members of the general public. The Report provides 17 recommendations on how to better promote and protect Toronto’s heritage.
Agincourt School, Image: City of Toronto Archives
The Report identifies strong examples of successful heritage work, but it also describes an overall sense of public discouragement at the continued slow pace of heritage protection and, in some cases, the outright refusal of private and public leaders to recognize and integrate heritage into their plans.
Report Highlights:
We must showcase the depth and breadth of heritage outside downtown Toronto. The Report identifies a need for greater recognition and protection of Toronto’s suburban heritage, finding that 91% of listed properties are in the downtown council area. “We’re the poor cousin of downtown,” said one Scarborough resident who is quoted in the Report. Scarborough has only 163 listed properties, compared with over 10,500 in Toronto and East York. That region’s Agincourt neighbourhood has been waiting for over a decade for its Heritage Conservation District to be approved.
Heritage and sustainability are natural allies.
The Report also calls for more incentives for environmentally friendly adaptive reuse of heritage buildings, recognizing that ...