Simmel offers a micro-sociological analysis that concentrates on minutiae details of everyday life. He was ignored by the academia during his lifetime but his work attracted attention among later sociologists and especially the Chicago School which had pioneered the sub-discipline of urban sociology.

Simmel’s preoccupation was with the effect of the city on the individual and the article was not well-received because the mood of the time was to celebrate the city and not to analyze it critically. Simmel’s perspective was much more ambivalent, if not skeptical and it is this ambiguity that has given this essay a lasting place in the discourse on the metropolis.

Simmel begins with a quintessentially urban existential dilemma. He recognizes that freed from the obligations of the ties of gemeinschaft, the urban dweller is faced with a predicament where liberation is accompanied by the agony of restlessness. The urban subject is embedded in the iron cage of a mass society. The modern conflict that faces humanity is: how does the individual maintain the independence and individuality of his/her existence against the sovereign powers of the ‘free’ society?

The essay begins with the following statement: “The deepest problems of modern life derive from the claim of the individual to preserve the autonomy and individuality of his existence in the face of overwhelming social forces, of historical heritage, of external culture, and of the technique of life.” ¹