Culture and urbanity: from Simmel’s metropolis to the fragmented and deterritorialized city

Abstract

This paper outlines the central concepts of Simmel’s work on urban culture, metropolis and modernity, as well as the epistemological aspects of his analysis, linking them to current thinking on the transformations of the contemporary city. It highlights the money economy, the “tragedy of culture” and its effects on the individual’s mental life. The metropolis is seen as place for conflicts, exchanges, consumption, collision of bodies, mobilities, border crossings and the metaphors of the bridges and the doors, the fashion and the coquetterie. This view confronts us with Simmel’s philosophical and sociological positions in our quest to understand how they can help us to think about contemporary urbanity, considering the new spaces of communication, fragmentation, (de)territorialization and other socio-cultural dimensions.