Symbolic Urbanism:
The City and the Soul

with Will Selman

Saturday, November 18, 2023
1 pm - 2:30 pm EST, on Zoom
Please convert to your Time Zone

This Program Will Be Recorded.
The recording link will be sent to you within 72 hours after the live program.

Program Cost: $35

register to attend

The places we build reflect the values we hold.

Are you curious about the role a city or town can play in creating a life of meaning and purpose, through myth, symbol, and poetry?

Can walking (or biking!) the city streets be a spiritual as well as physical exercise? Can the urban pattern itself act as a tool of spiritual and psychological growth and development? How would the psychologist Carl Jung design a city?

If you are a spiritual seeker or student of psychology interested in urban experience… or, an urbanist curious about the design of place from a perspective of symbolic and mythic storytelling, this lecture offers intriguing insights.

We will consider the design and experience of cities and urban space as an aspect of the ongoing evolutionary psychic awakening of humanity. Washington DC is the perfect classroom for exploring the symbolic role of urbanism, both for personal psychic growth and renewing a civilization of depth and meaning. Its physical pattern also provides insight for the repair of broken suburban patterns of living, as well as responses to climate change and cultural shifts.

This intersection of traditional urban planning and Jungian depth psychology can provide insights for both personal and civilizational transformation.

Who Is It For

Students of Jungian Depth Psychology who wish to learn how to live Jung's dictum, that "there is no coming to individuation without relationship to place."
Spiritual seekers who desire to ground their journey more fully into place, more specifically the urban environment of cities and towns.
Professional urbanists and advocates who wish to infuse their work with a more soulful approach.

Your Instructor

Will Selman, CNU-A, is the founder of the Institute for Symbolic Urbanism and a New Urbanist land planning consultant in Washington, DC. A thirty-year member of the Congress for New Urbanism, he is professionally focused on issues surrounding land development, zoning, comprehensive planning, the design of traditional walkable and sustainable mixed-use neighborhoods, and community visioning and charrettes.

What You Will Learn

Gain an overview of the process of the evolution of human consciousness over thousands of years, as understood through the astrological ages
The psychological and spiritual role the City played in that awakening of consciousness, for the first founders of cities 6,000 years ago
How we can make use of urban settings today, as spiritual classrooms, through meditative walking, labyrinths, and the practice of the "Flaneur"
The problems caused by the conventional pattern of American suburban living, and an outline of the elements of traditional town design
The example of Washington DC as a city intentionally designed as a spiritual metaphor by the use of sacred geometry
How the example of Washington can be used as a template for the repair of suburban sprawl, and in response to climate change and cultural shifts.