Posted Oct 25, 2024, 10:48 PM
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Join Date: Sep 2019
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https://vancouversun.com/news/vancouver-heritage-buildings-register-cultural-diversity
Quote:
Vancouver drops 'Eurocentric' approach to how buildings are chosen for city's heritage register
New system looks to take a broader approach to heritage that will consider the 'intangible' elements of a building
The City of Vancouver has changed its approach to how buildings get added to the heritage register to better reflect cultural diversity.
Whereas in the past, buildings were chosen mostly for their physical attributes, such as the Art Deco-style Marine Building downtown, the new expanded criteria will take into account a building’s “intangible” elements, including cultural traditions, memories and lived experiences associated with the building. This could, for instance, encompass structures such as the old, wooden Victorian houses in what was formerly known as Little Tokyo.
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Zlatan Jankovic, a senior heritage planner for the city, said in an email that the previous grading system was “largely centred on Eurocentric cultural values, restricting the types of places considered eligible.”
So the city has shifted to a new methodology “embracing community-centred approaches that better represent the cultural diversity of Vancouver.”
In the past, a Heritage-A building was regarded as a “primary significant” structure, Heritage-B as “significant” and Heritage-C as a “character or contextual” building.
In practice, this meant that Heritage-A buildings tended to be larger commercial structures or mansions, such as Hycroft Manor in Shaughnessy, while the lesser grades were smaller commercial buildings, apartments or houses.
“The former numerical system used for evaluating architectural significance has been replaced with a values-based approach,” according to the city’s website. “This updated methodology prioritizes the meaning of a place to the community, integrating cultural traditions, practices, and historical associations together with the building’s physical design.”
Heritage expert Don Luxton said the new approach was proposed back in 2017, when he helped put together a “Heritage Action Plan” for the city.
“It may actually send a message to stop grading heritage so that we only care about 200 A-listed buildings,” Luxton said. “Its an outdated 1970s idea.”
Civic historian John Atkin sees it as a positive step and in keeping with current practices in cities across North America and parts of western Europe.
“It’s going in the direction that I think is a correct one, going away from the physical, built heritage to looking at the deeper meanings of place and site, the so-called intangible side of things.”
Atkin said in Vancouver’s case, it can bring in Indigenous heritage that may have been previously missed.
“When you preserve a building but you don’t offer the layers of context of a site, I think that sometimes stops history in its tracks,” he said.
“A building in Chinatown might actually sit on the (old) shore of False Creek, which was also a food-gathering area for the local Indigenous population, or a canoe pullout or whatever. There might be layers there, that’s where they’re heading with it.”
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More poison pills for development on the way. "Heritage building" might just mean "an indigenous person was here once", now.
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