Ecumenopolis
Ecumenopolis (from Greek: οἰκουμένη, meaning "world", and πόλις polis meaning "city"), thus a city made of the whole world; pl. ecumenopolises or ecumenopoleis) is the hypothetical concept of a planet wide city. The word was invented in 1967 by the Greek city planner Constantinos Doxiadis to represent the idea that in the future urban areas and megalopolies would eventually fuse and there would be a single continuous worldwide city as a progression from the current urbanization and population growth trends. This concept was already current in science fiction in 1942, with Trantor in the Foundation series.
Doxiadis also created a scenario based on the traditions and trends of urban development of his time, predicting at first a European eperopolis ("continent city") which would be based on the area between London, Paris, Rhine-Ruhr and Amsterdam.
Before the term had been created the concept had been previously discussed. The American religious leader Thomas Lake Harris (1823–1906) mentioned city-planets in his verses, and science fiction author Isaac Asimov used the city-planet Trantor as the setting of some of his novels. In science fiction, the ecumenopolis has become a frequent topic and most recently popularized by the planet Coruscant in the Star Wars universe. In fantasy, particularly that of the card game Magic: The Gathering multiverse, the plane of Ravnica, featured in two blocks and book series, is a large plane of one massive city.
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Look up ecumenopolis in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. |
- Ecumenopolis: Tomorrow's City Constantinos Doxiadis, Britannica Book of the year, 1968.