Urban growth past a threshold produces self-reinforcing cosmopolitan expansion that transforms quantity into quality

Evidence

It is rather in transcending this purely tangible extensiveness that the metropolis also becomes the seat of cosmopolitanism. … In the same way, economic, personal and intellectual relations in the city (which are its ideal reflection), grow in a geometrical progression as soon as, for the first time, a certain limit has been passed. Every dynamic extension becomes a preparation not only for a similar extension but rather for a larger one and from every thread which is spun out of it there continue, growing as out of themselves, an endless number of others. … At this point the quantitative aspects of life are transformed qualitatively. The sphere of life of the small town is, in the main, enclosed within itself. For the metropolis it is decisive that its inner life is extended in a wave-like motion over a broader national or international area. — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 757

Categorization

• XREF: Self-reinforcing growth beyond a threshold resonates with the reader’s essay on Julius’s urban wandering: the city’s inner life expands geometrically, which is the very engine feeding the blasé attitude Julius must defend against. — connects to: Building autonomous objective culture resembles economic takeoff into self-sustaining growth — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 87; Self-fulfilment can positively appropriate globalised influences rather than retreat — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 298
• DEFINE: Simmel’s core definition of cosmopolitanism as transcending physical extensiveness—the city exists in the totality of effects beyond its boundaries.

Related

• Building autonomous objective culture resembles economic takeoff into self-sustaining growth (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• Building autonomous objective culture resembles economic takeoff into self-sustaining growth #expands (0.75) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 87
• Self-fulfilment can positively appropriate globalised influences rather than retreat #expands (0.75) — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 298