I cannot understand the lack of logic in the WHS List. I appreciate that nominations occur year after year but more work and effort should be invested so as to have a coherent and logic WHS List.

I think that transnational nominations as well as WHS clusters (counting as 1 WHS on the list) could be a smart way of decreasing the overall number of WHS without excluding them from the list.

For example, I like the idea of grouping Wooden Churches per country, per religious identity or per architectural style. However, I would also expect the same principle to be applied retroactively by UNESCO on other sites that have been inscribed individually in the past. Something in the line of Most important Gothic Churches in France (instead of having the ones in Paris, Reims, Amiens, etc. inscribed separately or Roman Villas in Lazio instead of Villa Tivoli and Villa Adriana as 2 WHS.

The same applies to having mixed cultural and natural sites that are very close to each other (or overlapping each other in certain cases) as grouped WHS, for example Pienza and Val d'Orcia.

This would not only decrease the sheer size of the WHS List in general, but also it would help reduce the number of European WHS, Catholic/Christian WHS, etc. Then, I think, we wouldn't have such a Europe-dominated WHS (or at least the number of separate WHS would go down and the list would be more logical and coherent.

What do you think?

In general I agree and this is also an ongoing tendency with nominations, exnteding current ones rather than always proposing new ones.
Just to address your ideas - Tivoli has two inscribed villas: Adriana is Roman but dell'Este is Renaissance. Paris is not mainly inscribed for its Gothic cathedral. Reims maybe is, but two other monuments are also included in the nomination. Val d'Orcia is a cultural landscape and not anatural site.

I think we should not focus on the number, it is not different between the long list of serial sites with single name inscription and the long list of seperate insciption at the end. Also each site is not inscribed under the same criteria, each has its own merit on OUV, so to group the nearby sites or similar site such as Gothic Cathedral is not represent the value of those sites. Grouping or Serial site should only be used for the sites with common OUV that justified by the state or ICOMOS. Yes, many time grouping/serial method has been used as technic to nominate many sites as much as possible which somethime some sites seem to be irrelavant with orther site in the group.

I agree with Durian, that it is hardly possible to combine sites that are already inscribed. This would mean that all the nomination documents, comparative analysis etc have to be re-done. So far, comparative analysis aimed to point out the differences to comparable sites in order to demonstrate the historical and architectural value of an individual site. A re-organization would mean that the similarities would have to be emphasized.
And would such a rearrangement of the numbering really improve the balance between the regions? I think the only way to achieve this is to encourage countries in under-represented regions in nominating new sites. But I do not know how this could be done.

Interesting. So it's not all politics after all! Good to know and thank you for your contributions.