World Heritage Update: Tentative Lists

One way for me to increase the number of World Heritage Sites I've visited is to, well, visit more World Heritage Sites. A less obvious way is for places I've already visited to be inscribed on the list. The Sydney Opera House was inscribed in 2007; Christina and I had visited it in 2002. I visited at least three other sites "before they were stars": Brugge, Edinburgh and Jeju.

Besides lobbying UNESCO (that just got trickier), what can I do to increase the odds that sites get inscribed after I visit them? As it turns out, UNESCO now requires any sites to be on a "tentative list" before being nominated. So I can try to visit sites on the tentative lists and then hope they get moved to the real list. This method is not foolproof -- sites may get withdrawn from the tentative lists, and new sites that I haven't visited may replace them. Still, it is a good way at increasing the odds.

With that in mind, what sites have I already visited that are on the tentative lists?

• The Alamo
• Frank Lloyd Wright Buildings
• The Great Western Railway
• Innsbruck
• Shakespeare's Stratford
• Spanish Wine Regions

I thought there might be more, but this isn't a bad list. It looks like the Alamo and Frank Lloyd Wright are near the top of the U.S. list, which would have been awesome if the U.S. hadn't just stopped contributing to UNESCO's budget. Well, I'll keep my eyes out for more opportunities during my travels.