The Urban Heritage Project (part of the Preservation Research Collaborative at Penn) is authoring a Cultural Landscape Report for the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial in Washington, D.C., on behalf of the National Park Service. Although the memorial was dedicated just 14 years ago, it presents evolving challenges related to sea level rise, monoculture vegetation, character-defining viewsheds, and more—all while welcoming more than 3 million people each year.
Penn's research team is working with Kofi Boone, FASLA, of North Carolina State University to analyze this most recent addition to the memorial landscape around the Tidal Basin—work that includes research into the design history of the memorial; ethnographic methods to document contemporary perception and use; analysis of landscape conditions, impacts, and alterations; and the creation of treatment recommendations that will guide the next several decades of NPS's site management. The project will also result in a nomination to designate the memorial on the National Register of Historic Places.
In addition to faculty and staff, this project has included 17 graduate research assistants from three departments at Weitzman, training them in methods associated with GIS data collection, cultural resource mapping, observational mapping, and ethnographic interviews.
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