Dreaming About a City

What people remember from city dreams is rarely the skyline. It is the wrongness of the streets: a familiar place with its geography rearranged, a shortcut that arrives somewhere impossible. The tradition reads a city as your social world, the whole machinery of other people, opportunity and traffic that you have to move through in order to get anywhere.

Familiar city, wrong layout

Rearranged versions of cities you know are among the most frequently described dream settings there are. Interpreters usually connect them to a familiar part of life that has changed its shape: a workplace after a reorganisation, a friendship group after a split, a hometown you have outgrown. The sensation of nearly knowing the way is the significant part, and people report it most during a move or a first month in a new job.

Crowds, emptiness and height

A city thick with people is generally understood as demand: obligations, noise, the awareness of being one among many. An empty city, lights on and nobody in the streets, is taken quite differently, often as isolation in a place where you are technically surrounded. Looking down on a city from a height carries a long-standing association with perspective, with seeing the pattern of your circumstances instead of standing inside it. Being lost in one is common enough to be nearly universal and is usually linked to choices rather than to places.

Which city, and what it is to you

A city you have lived in, a city you left, and a city you have only seen in films are three different symbols wearing one name. Somebody who grew up in a village reads urban space in dreams quite differently from somebody who has never lived anywhere else. Start from your own map.