Unit 3
Theories of Urbanism
Theorist
• George Simmel
• Fridrend Tonnies
• Louis Wirth
• Claude Fischer
• Herbert Gans
George Simmel (1858-1918)
• German Sociologist
• His father, a Jewish businessman
• Simmel studied philosophy and history
at the University of Berlin
• Simmel received his doctorate in 1881
• Interest (philosophy, sociology, social psychology
And cultural analysis )
• In 1890, he married Gertrud Kinel, herself a philosopher
• Simmel died from liver cancer
The Chicago School of Sociology
• The nature of urban life and its problem attracted the attention of many
early sociologists especially the Max Weber and George Simmel, Louis Wirth
G.H. Mead, Robert Park , Earnest Burgess, C.H. Cooley and Jane Adams;
• The first major body of works emerging during the 1920s and 1930s
specializing in urban sociology
• Defined by its concern for the city and its interest in using Chicago as a
laboratory in which to study urbanization and its problems
Metropolis and Mental Life (1903)
• One of Simmel's most widely read works; a series of lectures on all aspects
of city life by experts in various fields,
• The role of intellectual (or scholarly) life in the big city, and to analyze the
effects of the big city on the mind of the individual
Metropolis and Mental Life
• Simmel‘s concept of Modernity
• What is a City ?
• The increase of rationality and the loss of authenticity
• About the blasé outlook, individualization and theatricality
Simmel‘s concept of Modernity
(City and Money Economy)
• Objective and Subjective culture
• Objective culture (things that people produced e.g. art, science, technology,
philosophy, laws, institutions etc.)
• Subjective culture (the capacity of actors to absorb and control the elements
of objective culture)
• Subjective culture would vary by age, gender, class, race and vocation
• As a result, subjective culture is the personality of the individual
Count…..
• Simmel’ modernity is a cultural system based on an advanced, capitalist
money economy which creates a false consciousness of stability, security,
order and a serenity of mind and action
• Modernity create “A sense of tragedy”
• In advanced modern capitalism the sheer abundance of items, goods,
cultural products and choices is overwhelming and no single individual is
able to internalize even a particle of these commodities
• Objective culture grows at the same time when subjective culture lies in the
atrophy, and thus the individual is alienated, impoverished and eventually
estranged. This is how the tragedy of modern culture appears.
What is a City ?
• Simmel was the first who discovered a new aspect of the city by stating that
• A city is the form of psychic rather than physical life;
• The essence of the city does not lie in the abundance of the buildings and
architectural constructions.
• Simmel stressed prima facie “invisible” fact that a city forms human
mentality, imagination and thinking
The increase of rationality and the loss of
authenticity
• The metropolitans react primarily in a rational way; what is important
to stress is the fact that instead of emotional reactions
• Intellectualistic (rational, calculating) character of mental life of the
metropolis distinguishes it from the life in a small, rural town
• The fragmentation, rapidity, diversity of life in the city demand and
develop one's intellectual capacities
• They start to perceive one another primarily in utilitarian terms and
lose their capacity to create direct, authentic relationships with others.
Scientists have begun to examine how the city life
affects the brain, and the results are chastening. Just
being in an urban environment, they have found,
impairs our basic mental processes. After spending
a few minutes on a crowded city street, the brain is
less able to hold things in memory, and suffers from
reduced self-control. While it’s long been recognized
that city life is exhausting
that’s why Picasso left Paris
About the blasé outlook, individualization
and theatricality
• Simmel described blasé attitude as an attitude of absolute boredom
and lack of concern.
• Simmel explains it as a multiple stimuli and at the final step we
withdraw emotionally due to blasé attitude
• Its due to changes in knowledge, culture and how we are faced
with diverse people and circumstances (the busy lifestyle, the
nightlife)
