How does the metropolis allow urban individuals more autonomy and flexibility to define themselves without the cultural pressures found in smaller communities?

Rural communities are more burdened with traditions and conventional thinking. Metropolises allow for more freedom from community conventions because of the number of residents and the diversity of viewpoints.

Explanation:

In the more canonical approaches to sociology,  it is believed that cultural pressures are stronger in smaller communities, particularly in the work of  scholars like Georg Simmel, for example, and in urban sociology. For Simmel, rural life was limiting to individual thinking and rational thought because rural life was burdened with a lot of close, personal relationships that tended to perpetuate traditions that were resistant to individualism and change.  However urban environments were more liberating in the sense there was more social alienation from community standards and social control. The city and urban environments afford a lot of anonymity.  Simmel for example believed that urban life transforms the psyche of a person irreversibly where they become more detached from social conventions and more individualistic in their thinking.  

it was because they had to go around looking for fresh food and water