The Metropolis and the City Image and its Elements
“This results in the individual’s summoning the utmost uniqueness and particularization in order to preserve his most personal core..reason for the bitter hatred which the preachers of the most extreme individualism…against the metropolis” - George Simmel
This reading brought to mind that the urbanism may first and first-most be experienced through the individual and that we cannot eliminate the individualized self when reading the entire city. According to Simmel, when we read urbanism as a metropolis or as as a monotonous entity, we loose the self but we also loose the social aspect of urbanism. That is why when we read Kevin Lynch’s The City Image and Its Elements he annotates the city (paths, edges, districts, nodes, and landmarks) from the perspective of the person moving around the city. We can assume that Lynch and Simmel would not want us to read the city as the master architect or planner but through the vantage point of the individual.
This brings into question whether we as urban designers can assume the perspective of other individuals and more importantly what this perspective is when it comes to design.
