MODERN CITIES

1.- What do you understand from the assertion that “the psychological
foundation, upon which the metropolitan individuality is erected, is the
intensification of emotional life due to the swift continuous shift of external and
internal stimuli”? How did the development of the “modern” city promote this
occurrence?
What we understand is that the man is a unique creature and it have particular and
different needs, it also depends on the things that he have lived, everyone have a
different perception of life and the way they wanted to live. The city sometimes
promotes individualism because it doesn’t have spaces where the people can coexist
in a good environment. The modern city is always giving stimulations because of the
movement of the daily life. We are always looking for the place where we belong, the
one that perfect fits with our skills and abilities, and modern city give multiple options
to develop in them.
2.- How does Simmel define the “blasé” attitude to metropolitan
existence; how is this attitude derived and how might it effect the perception of
architecture?
Simmel describes that the “blasé” is when a person “can no longer produce any
reaction at all” because they have a continuous nervous stimulation that is caused by
the crowded and polluted urban spaces makes that the population develop a defensive
creation against the Metropolis. The “blasé” type makes that the people respond to the
“shock” of the metropolitan life with their intellect rather than the heart, the people is
like harassed of all the things the metropolis is “attacking”.
The architecture can help the people to make them feel like a “break” of all the
perceptions that they get from the city, the architecture can give them a place where
they can feel free and help them to relax or it could also contribute to the stress and
disorder that the people perceived from the city and make them fall in the “blasé”
attitude.
3.- How does Simmel understand the economic division of labour to have
led to a narrower type of intellectual individuation of mental qualities? How
might this be understood to be manifest in postmodern architectural practice?
Simmel understand the economic division like a way to classify the people by their
different qualities, every person have the skills to make different things, each one like
different activities and also every single person want to grow up in their personal life,
but the city have an equal increase, so if you want to succeed you’ll need to fight for it.
This can affect the postmodern architectural practice in different ways, for example
the architecture is going to try to accomplish the objective for which it was built, so
the objective of the constructions are always going to change, the goals of the
architecture are always in constant changing, it could not remain the same because
there would not be any evolution and we need that change to grow up as a city and
every person tries to give their best and work in the things they are good at, every
person is different and everyone have different skills and in that way everyone
contributes in certain way to their city.