Reimagining the City at the Hearth Summit

Selva Gürdoğan joined the plenary panel "Reimagining the City" at the Global Hearth Summit 2025 in Ljubljana, in conversation with May East, Marco Casagrande and Jonathan Rose.

The plenary session Reimagining the City: Sacred Foundations, Listening Practices, and Intergenerational Wisdom at the Global Hearth Summit 2025 in Ljubljana was part of the summit's second-day plenary, From Inner Work to Sacred Relationship, held on 19 June in the Gallus Hall at Cankarjev Dom. She was joined by May East, Marco Casagrande and Jonathan Rose, with Thobile Chittenden moderating.

The conversation brought together four practitioners working on cities from very different starting points, asking what urban life might become if shaped by ecological consciousness, spiritual depth and sustained attention to voices that planning usually overlooks — cities approached as living things, where design begins with listening.

Convened by The Wellbeing Project, the Hearth Summit returned for its second global edition after Bilbao in 2022, gathering more than 800 participants from over 80 countries across four days of keynotes, plenaries, workshops and performances.

Drawing on Superpool's work on public space and childhood in the city, Selva argued that the conditions for play are a matter of permission rather than budget: play does not require anything expensive, only that space, time and permission are provided for it.

Watch the plenary recording · Speaker profile at The Wellbeing Project · Full event program