The Culture of the City

In his historically and theoretically comprehensive monograph, Siebel conceives a detailed image of this culture of the city, traces its ambivalent developments and from that establishes the renaissance of the city and its cultural productivity.

It is this culture, and not political of economic structures, that distinguishes the city from the countryside. According to Georg Simmel, it’s the »intellectual life«, among others, that makes the metropolis a special place. This is the thought that Walter Siebel draws on. His key hypothesis is that two features characterise the urban lifestyle today: relief from necessary labours and constant encounters with strangers.

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