Bradshaw Hovey, Associate Director, The Urban Design Project University at Buffalo, State University of New York

A Summary of the Conversation

When people talk, different listeners hear different things. This is the case even when people listen very carefully. It is common business practice in Japan for an organization to send multiple representatives to the same meeting. Everyone is expected to take careful notes and afterward they compare to see if they all heard the conversation in the same way. The hope that drove this analysis was that a systematic form of listening would also produce a summary of the proceedings that everyone would recognize. We will let readers be the judge of that.

Because not all of A Canal Conversation was tape recorded, it was necessary to assemble these proceedings in a variety of ways. Opening remarks on Monday evening by Catherine Schweitzer and Kevin Gaughan were taken from their prepared texts. Gerald Adelmann’s keynote address was reconstructed based on a telephone interview with Adelmann and a subsequent write-up by the editors. Adelmann reviewed and approved that text.

The two Tuesday morning sessions were both tape recorded by WNED radio, and included here are the edited transcripts from presentations by Karen Engelke, Tom Gallaher, Tom Moriarity, Elaine Carmichael, and their respective moderators. Homer Russell’s noon-time talk on urban design was not recorded. But he graciously agreed to replicate his performance, showing slides to himself in his office in Boston and speaking into a tape recorder. A transcript of that is included here.

The text representing Tuesay afternoon’s session includes an article previously written by Gerald Adelmann on the heritage corridor development process as a substitute for his remarks that day; Ana Koval’s prepared text; and a fleshed-out version of Linda Neal’s outline notes for her remarks. There is no record of the afternoon panel discussion. The discussion sessions that ended the conference are captured in the notes of volunteer facilitators.

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