These excerpts from texts or poems reveal the images of city and soul.
Milan Kundera on Slowness
"Imposing form on a period of time is what beauty demands, but so does memory. For what is formless cannot be grasped, or committed to memory. Conceiving their encounter as a form was especially precious for them, since their night was to have no tomorrow and could be repeated only through recollection. There is a secret bond between slowness and memory, between speed and forgetting. Consider this utterly commonplace situation: a man is walking down the street. At a certain moment, he tries to recall something, but the recollection escapes him. Automatically, he slows down. Meanwhile, a person who wants to forget a disagreeable incident he has just lived through starts unconsciously to speed up his pace, as if he were trying to distance himself from a thing still to close to him in time. In existential mathematics, that experience takes the form of two basic equations: the degree of slowness is directly proportional to the intensity of memory; the degree of speed is directly proportional to the intensity of forgetting."
Jalalu'l-Din Rumi on Wandering Silence
There is a way between voice and presence
where information flows.
In disciplined silence it opens.
With wandering talk it closes.
Gaston Bachelard from Poetics of Space. Beacon Press. 1994.
“First of all, as is proper in a study of images and intimacy, we shall pose the problem of the poetics of the house. The questions abound: how can secret rooms, rooms that have disappeared, become abodes for an unforgettable past? Where and how does repose find especially conducive situations? How is it that, at times, a provisional refuge or an occasional shelter is endowed in our intimate day-dreaming with virtues that have no objective foundation?”
Italo Calvino from Invisible Cities. Harcourt Brace. 1974
“…The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines on a hand, written in the corners of the streets, the gratings of the windows, the banisters of the steps, the antennae of the lightening rods, the poles of the flags, every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls. "
1969 Interview with Jane Jacobs
Cool interview with Jane Jacobs on "The Way it Is" about what is wrong with Urban Renewal and more. Still relevant for today to her: "The city has something to offer to everyone, since it is created by everyone"
Caution 1: This is a “slow” site or to quote ancient wisdom for Thailand: “Life is short we must move slowly.”
Caution 2: you will not find here a formula or the
seven steps to city and soul, because city and soul must be experienced -- or felt. With soul making, you feel and pull some threads to weave
something that fits the place. So select what inspires, provokes or
ticks you off, as that is what you are suppose to carry into your soul
making. City and Soul, is like Christopher Alexander’s building
process: an unfolding.
Experience City and Soul 
"Imposing form on a period of time is what beauty demands, but so does memory. For what is formless cannot be grasped, or committed to memory. Conceiving their encounter as a form was especially precious for them, since their night was to have no tomorrow and could be repeated only through recollection. There is a secret bond between slowness and memory, between speed and forgetting. Consider this utterly commonplace situation: a man is walking down the street. At a certain moment, he tries to recall something, but the recollection escapes him. Automatically, he slows down. Meanwhile, a person who wants to forget a disagreeable incident he has just lived through starts unconsciously to speed up his pace, as if he were trying to distance himself from a thing still to close to him in time. In existential mathematics, that experience takes the form of two basic equations: the degree of slowness is directly proportional to the intensity of memory; the degree of speed is directly proportional to the intensity of forgetting."
“…The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines on a hand, written in the corners of the streets, the gratings of the windows, the banisters of the steps, the antennae of the lightening rods, the poles of the flags, every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls. "