Ecumenopolis

Ecumenopolis is the concept of a planetwide city. It has been featured in many science fiction works, including Star Wars, as well as in real-life city planning.

The word was created in 1967 by the Greek city planner Constantinos Apostolou Doxiadis as a way to represent a future where cities and megalopolises merge and become one planetwide city. When his idea hit the public, it was seen as "closer to science fiction", but today is "surprisingly fitting" according to geography researchers Pavle Stamenovic, Dunja Predic and Davor Eres,^[1] mainly as an outcome of globalization.

Doxiadis also created the term eperopolis ("continent city") to describe a merge between London, Paris, Rhine-Ruhr, and Amsterdam.^[2] In 2008, Time Magazine created the term Nylonkong to describe a eperopolis consisting of New York City, London, and Hong Kong.

Before the term was created, American religious leader Thomas Lake Harris (1823-1906) explored the idea of city-planets in his verses, and science fiction author Issac Asimov used the city-planet Trantor as a setting for his Foundation series.^[3]

In Star Wars, Coruscant is the planetwide capital of the Galactic Republic (later Empire) and home of the Jedi Order.^[4] Other eucumenopolises included in the franchise include Hosnian Prime, Nar Shaada, and Taris.

In Dune, Giedi Prime is the home of the Harkonnens infamous for its gladiator arenas. In Stellaris, players are given the option to transform planets into eucumenopolises which can assist with their arcology.^[5]

In the lore of Warhammer 40,000, Earth in the far future has been transformed into a Gothic-style eucumenopolis sometime around the 30th millennium AD after its establishment as the capital of the faction known as the Imperium of Man. The planetwide city houses multiple continent-scale districts housing the different branches of society and government.

In Magic: The Gathering, the plane of Ravnica is a eucumenopolis.^[6]

In the DC Comics universe, the villain Darkseid rules over his home planet of Apokolips, which is often described as a hellish landscape with industrial architecture meant to fuel his empire.^[7]

The manga and film BLAME! is set in the far future in which Earth has become the ruins of a eucumenopolis, which is suggested to cover most of the solar system as well.

1. ↑ Stamenovic, Pavle; Predic, Dunja & Eres, Davor (2015). "Transparency of Scale: Geographical Information Program (Google Earth) and the View from Beyond". In Vaništa Lazarević, Eva; Vukmirović, Milena; Krstić-Furundžić, Aleksandra & Đukić, Aleksandra (eds.). Keeping Up with Technologies to Improve Places. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. p. 44. ISBN 978-1-4438-7739-8. Archived from the original on November 6, 2021. Retrieved May 21, 2020.
2. ↑ Doxiadis, C.A. (1975). "Economics and the ekistic grid". Ekistics. 40 (236): 1–4. ISSN 0013-2942. JSTOR 43618525.
3. ↑ Chu, Seo-Young (2011). Do Metaphors Dream of Literal Sleep? A Science-Fictional Theory of Representation. Harvard University Press. p. 100.
4. ↑ Tinnin, Drew (March 15, 2023). "How Star Wars' Coruscant Became The Planet-Wide City Of Your Nightmares". Slash Film.
5. ↑ "Stellaris: Best Origins Explained and Ranked". The Gamer.
6. ↑ "Dungeons & Dragons: Ravnica, the Worldwide City, Explained". Comic Book Resources.
7. ↑ DC Comics: Anatomy of a Metahuman. Insight Editions. 2018. p. 100.