Bob’s talk is called “The Story of Lucy, the White Deer of San Diego: A Terrapsychological Inquiry”
In 1975, a white doe, who had taken up a 10-year residence in a park situated just above San Diego’s Old Town, was shot with a tranquilizer dart by animal control officers and later died from an adverse reaction to that dart. Using techniques adapted from terrapsychology, my presentation tells the story of Lucy, the white deer of Presidio Park, coalescing geography (place), history (time), and the mythic imagination to re-imagine a since-forgotten news story into a symbolic image of how Lucy’s death mirrors the death of the once-verdant, now overdeveloped San Diego river valley, the area where she once roamed free. Lucy’s story also offers hope for renewal of the San Diego river valley as a ribbon-like regional open space park stretching from the mountains to the ocean.
About Bob
Robert (Bob) Scott, PhD, holds a BA in Geography and a PhD in Mythological Studies with an emphasis in Depth Psychology. In a 30-year professional career in city planning, Bob has observed a broken and outdated mythos around city planning, where economics control and where aesthetics and beauty, the subjective elements that stir the soul, have no real part to play. Bob has always been intrigued by the layout of cities, the magic of natural open spaces, and the psychological underpinnings of what makes a great sense of place. His academic and professional areas of interest are steering him toward a more humanistic and collaborative relationship toward the environment and city. His dissertation, Encountering San Diego: A City Planner’s Search for a City’s Soul, examines how geography, history, and the mythic imagination inform a city’s genius loci, or spirit of place.
