In the text, “The Metropolis and the Mental Life” Georg Simmel analyses the urban condition through the lens of the individual and its relation to economics. This shift in scale and our perceptions is connected through material goods and the built environment. In the beginning of the text, Simmel references historical precedent creating two types of economic systems which foster different modes of identity and expression within and in relation to them. The 18th and 19th centuries opened societal freedom of the historical cultural past and to create a identity through either capitalism or socialism. The goal, while achieved differently, is to maintain a sense of individualism in the collective of a population or mass culture. Capitalism created a unique identity using the diversification of the job market as a way to establish ones trade or speciality which would impact others perception of them. Socialism also tried to create individualism through demolishing competition allowing everyone their own opportunities to establish themselves from their peers.

Overall Simmel points out that the importance to be an individual is to not be lost in a society driven by technological advances. Also by focusing on the soul and mental sensory experiences, the metropolis support a sense of individuality. Architectural elements such as a traffic crossing give one a mental awareness of a organizational system through a sequence of flowing events or moments. When this unconscious steady equilibrium, as Simmel refers, in disrupted or disputed in the metropolis is when identity exists. Therefore, individual identity is the protection against intermittent larger impacts or changes to society in the metrpolitian environment. Simmels text explore the close relationship of economics and individualism where economic individualism is a qualitative relationship between people and the necessity to balance intellectual individualism into the city and global movement to develop a emotional connection in the future. He concludes with “when both of these forms of individualism which are nourished by the quantitative relationships of the metropolis, i.e. individual independence and the elaboration of personal peculiarities, are examined with reference to their historical position, the metropolis attains an entirely new value and meaning in the world history of the spirit.”

In the second text by Wolfgang Schivelbusch ” Excepts from the Railway Journey”, he speaks to the railroad as a space-time deformation and how speed Speed according to Schivelbusch changed transportation economics and shirking of space over time. These causes geographic and nationality boundaries to change not due to the physical distance fluctuating, rather a new proximity was conceived by new speed methods. There is also a notion that space-time alterations from speed of new transportations (ie. railroads) is not the same as the new territory gained from these methods, rather existing space that can be reached quicker and more readily.

In this point of the text an interesting concept is created explaining how this space-time change by railroads impacted the spaces in-between. Schivelbusch states “The detaching of the remote region from its original isolation, it’s opening-up by the railroad, can well be defined as the loss of its aura.” This topic, as first addressed by Walter Benjamin, speaks to how the speed-spatial relationship of transportation removed space from perception in-between points of destinations and there is a loss of local distinction and depreciation of individual identity. This deprivation of local time and space allows for a exploitation that access allows, mass tourism. Devaluation of outlying regions and exploitation of genuineness distorts reality and further damages the unique identity and heritage of the local space-time locations. Also, Schivelbusch points out additional transportation methods such as the ship, car and airplane, all create this predicament, but the railroad for its time caused such a large shift due to its large economic and social presence. Therefore Schivelbusch finishes by explaining “means of tourism: this is merely a prelude, a preparation for making any unique thing available by means of reproductions. When spatial distance is no longer experienced, the differences between original and reproductions diminishes.”