This article deals with questions concerning the relations between metropolitan life and cosmopolitanism. It mentions historical examples and examines contemporary situations, exploiting recent changes in world life. It also deals with the themes of social-cultural complexity, heterogeneity, mediation, multiculturalism and it is implications for different life styles. One of its main concerns, focalizing especially urban life, is the general question of social interaction and sociability as a basic phenomenon for social and historical processes.
complexity; cosmopolitanism; heterogeneity; mediation