🏙️ The Places That Don’t Exist: A Guide to Imaginary Cities

Close your eyes.

Now try to remember a city you’ve never been to —

but somehow know deeply.

You’ve walked its streets in a dream.

You’ve passed its flickering streetlights.

You’ve stood in its train stations, looked out from its windows,

and maybe… you’ve lived there for years.

Even though it’s not real.

Or is it?

This is a guide to the cities that don’t exist,

the ones made of memory, intuition, and pure emotional architecture.

At The Yume Collective, we believe those places are just as important as the ones on maps.

Maybe even more.

1. We All Have a City That Doesn’t Exist

It shows up in dreams.

The layout is always almost familiar.

The colors are always a bit too soft.

There are buildings you can’t quite enter.

A street that loops back to itself.

A tower you’re always trying to reach.

Everyone’s version is different —

but the emotion is always the same:

You belong there.

But not fully.

You’re always just arriving, or just leaving.

That’s what makes it a liminal city.

2. The Architecture of Memory

Your imaginary city is made of pieces of real places:

A corner from your childhood school

A bridge from a vacation you barely remember

A hallway from a hospital you once walked through at night

These fragments fuse into something new.

Like memory playing architect.

Like your mind building a place to store

what can’t live in the real world.

Grief.

Wonder.

Longing.

Imagination.

These cities hold them all — silently, endlessly.

3. Why We Return There

You’ve had dreams set in the same city more than once.

It changes, but only slightly.

You know how to get around.

You know which door leads to the rooftop.

That city is yours.

Not in a metaphorical way.

But in a visceral, mapless, real way.

Maybe it's a version of you that lives in that city.

Maybe that version wakes up thinking you are the dream.

Either way,

these places become emotional safehouses.

You don’t control them.

But they always welcome you back.

4. Imaginary Doesn’t Mean Fake

In modern life, the word “imaginary” is often dismissed.

But if you think about it…

Every building started as a sketch.

Every street was once a path in someone’s mind.

Every real place began as a not-place.

Your dream cities are real, too.

They just exist on a different frequency.

One that’s harder to measure —

but impossible to forget.

5. The Yume City Blueprint

At The Yume Collective, we design sound and visuals

that feel like they belong to one of those cities.

The ones with:

Orange streetlights that hum

Elevators that go past the top floor

Laundromats that only exist at 3:11 a.m.

Rooftops with vending machines and no edge

We don’t build songs —

we build districts.

Each track is a block.

Each texture, a building.

Each moment, a doorway.

You’re not listening.

You’re walking through.

6. How to Visit Your Own City Again

Some of you haven’t been back in a while.

Here’s how to return:

Listen to music you don’t recognize

Stare out of a train window

Write down the dreams you forget too quickly

Close your eyes and ask, what street comes next?

The city will find you.

It always does.

And when you get there:

don’t try to control it.

Just explore.

Wander without expectation.

Let it remind you what you’ve been carrying.

🌐 We’ve Been Living There the Whole Time

You’ve passed us on the sidewalk.

You’ve seen our posters peeling off the alley walls.

You’ve sat near us at the 24-hour café that doesn’t really exist.

We’ve been there — in the cities that don’t exist.

And we’re building more.

📩 Email: [email protected]

📸 Instagram: @the.yume.collective

🎧 Spotify: open.spotify.com/user/31ahlk2hcj5xoqgq73sdkycogvza

💬 Discord: discord.gg/xnFxqSJ66y

**Some cities exist on maps.

Others live in the folds of your mind.

Both are real.

Both are home.**

— The Yume Collective