 The chronologically compressed and socially circumscribed character of the Viennese experience created a more coherent context for studying the different ramifications of its high culture (p. XXVI).The second essay, "The Ringstrasse, its critics, and the birth of urban modernism" looks back to explore the liberal cultural system in its ascendancy through the medium of urban form and architectural style ... but it looks forward too … to the critical responses on the part of two leading participants in it — Otto Wagner and Camillo Sitte — reveal the emergence of conflicting tendencies, communitarian and functionalist, in modern thought about the built environment (p. XXVIII).Schorske's work was one of the major references for Selden Edwards' "The Little Book", 
and serves as the model for a fictional book ("Random Notes", later edited and renamed "Fin de Siècle") written by one of the main characters, Arnauld Esterhazy.