Spring 2018 seminar: M.A. candidate, historic preservation planning
Gretchen Worth is a second-year master's student in historic preservation planning. She has returned to academia after many years working in the media industry in China and Southeast Asia. While there, she became involved with an organization working with communities to restore their important historic sites and volunteered on restoration projects in Mongolia, Nepal, and Armenia. It is these experiences that have brought her to Cornell and its city and regional planning program. She is most interested in the community aspects of restoration and preservation planning: how the community is defined, how to ensure disparate voices can be heard, people's sensorial memories of their important places, and the social and economic benefits that can be realized locally through the restoration of buildings and sites. Her thesis examines how the merging of site-specific art with historic structures can encourage community engagement in the process and participation, and, as a result, increase that community's (and the broader public's) recognition of the power of preservation.