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The urban environment, the city, has historically been a positive, utopian symbol in psyche: ‘The city as a synonym for the self, for psychic totality, is an old and well-known image’ (Jung 1935, para. 269). This symbolism is echoed by Wordsworth (1807):
This city doth, like a garment, wearThe beauty of the morning; silent bare,Ships, towers, domes, theatres and temples lieOpen unto the fields and to the sky;All bright and glittering in the smokeless air
The modern city, however, is no longer a ‘synonym for the self’ or ‘totality’ nor does it remain comforting; it is now a symbol of chaos, danger, loneliness, discrimination, dissipation by drugs and alcohol, homelessness, poverty, inequality, displacement by gentrification, and anomie.
The current mandate that forms the basis for all urban planning theory and practice is oriented to the ideal of the city by the use of symbolism derived from aspects of traditional, small-town designs, not to the reality. These are intended to promote a felt sense of containment and safety for its residents, such as dwellings mixed with local shopping opportunities or walking proximity to community services. The longing to return to this environment as the means to somehow overcome urban ills is the predominant theme in the planning of most cities of the world, where it is given the names of ‘livability’ and ‘sustainability’, that suggest the reacquisition of the values of a long-gone way of life. The trend, following the archetypal ideal, is in fact, to use planning to promote the formation of social capital: community networks of support to overcome isolation. This is the reason behind current calls for increased community participation in land use decisions and ‘place-based’