You are correct that recent immigrants (and subsequent generations) will likely not place the same value on history and context as those whose families have been here for many generations.
Well, if you want to be technical, "history and context" wouldn't have the same kind of
immediacy to newcomers as it does to the multi-generational--or even in cases of racialized discrimination, it may carry, directly or indirectly, an "ugly old values" stigma.
However, I do know from my experience (and observing that of others) that landing in a strange and unfamiliar place can actually stimulate a hit-the-ground-running curiosity as to the
genius loci, to the point where a newcomer such as me can actually "out-local the locals"--but unfortunately, as I've inferred, such "out-localling" these days can all too easily be pigeonholed and segmented off as that ol' SimpsonsPortlandia/Lonely Planet yuppie-hipster patronizing presumptiousness. (Though in practice, I actually find that Scarborough's newer ethno-demos have practiced a different kind of "out-localling", which has less to do w/aesthetics than w/economics and public-space-usage--that is, those rubby old strip malls and bus-stop nucleii actually feel more pulsing with energy and activity today than they did in the Wayne's World white-trash 70s/80s.)
If you want to take a counter-example: I'm of Polish background, I was in the "old country" back in the days of Communism, and according to your logic I, as a market-economy Westerner, should be rejecting that which was so-called cold, concrete, and Communistic. Au contraire; I'm up with the "Ostalgists" re the Communist-era legacy, and would gladly tell the idiot locals (or idiot visitors) who want to mass-dynamite said legacy to shove it.
You obviously place a great deal of value on architecture, aesthetics and history. While I genuinely admire your passion (obviously all of those things are important to the city), I can't quite buy into the narrative that a lack of beautiful architecture and history is an impoverished existence. People who are living in real poverty (which I'd wager most of us are lucky to have never experienced) would be insulted by that idea.
It isn't a matter of "a lack of beautiful architecture and history"; rather, it's a matter of abject, untutored, unmotivated incuriosity. The sort of thing which can
compound any existing "real poverty". (Indeed, these days even the "architecture of poverty", 50s/60s-style public housing and the sort, can be taken seriously from a heritage-esque standpoint.)
