Ecumenopolis (from oecumene 'world', and polis 'city', thus 'a world city'; plural ecumenopolises or ecumenopoleis) is the hypothetical concept of a planetwide city. Description The word was invented in 1967 by the Greek city planner Constantinos Apostolou Doxiadis to represent the idea that, in the future, urban areas and megalopolises would eventually fuse, and there would be a single continuous worldwide city as a progression from the current urbanization, population growth, transport and human networks. According to Doxiadis, it was the fifteenth level of ekistic units and the most significant one as the uppermost echelon of the classification. This concept was already current in science fiction in 1942, with Trantor in Isaac Asimov's Foundation series. When made public, Doxiadis' idea of ecumenopolis seemed "close to science fiction", but today is "surprisingly pertinent" according to geography researchers Pavle Stamenovic, Dunja Predic and Davor Eres, especially as a consequence of globalization and Europeanization. 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. In 2008, Time magazine coined Nylonkong to link New York City, London, and Hong Kong as the eperopolis of the Americas, Euro-Africa and Asia-Pacific. In popular culture 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 Foundation novels. In science fiction, the ecumenopolis has become a frequent topic and popularized in 1999 by the fictional city planet Coruscant in the Star Wars franchise, which is the capital of the Galactic Republic (later Empire) and home to the Jedi Order. In addition to Coruscant, the Star Wars Expanded Universe also features Nar Shadaa, a moon ecumenopolis known for being almost entirely ruled by crime lords, and Taris, a former ecumenopolis that was destroyed and became a ruined swamp. In Dune, the Harkonens' home world of Giedi Prime is a heavily polluted ecumenopolis infamous for its gladiator arenas. The concept has been explored in the video game Stellaris, where players are given the option of transforming a planet into an ecumenopolis, which provides a great deal of housing and space for industrial production at the cost of making the planet's