Ecumenopolitan

Pronunciation

• RP enPR: Ä•kyoÍžo'mÄ•nōpŏʹlÄ­tÉ™n, IPA: /ɛˌkjuːmÉ›nəʊˈpÉ’lɪtÉ™n/

Alternative forms

• Å“cumenopolitan rare

Origin

First reliably attested in 1974: either ecumenopolis + -itan, as Ecumenopolitan, or a generalised use thereof, parallel with the development of ecumenopolis.

Full definition of ecumenopolitan

Adjective

1. Of or conducive to the development, befitting the scale, or characteristic of an ecumenopolis or ecumenopoleis.
• 1971: The Mastery of Urban Growth: Report of the International Colloquium, Brussels, 2–4 December 1969, page 47 (Mens en ruimte, M. plus R international)… “ecumenopolitan” formations.
• 1974: Spenser W. Havlick, The Urban Organism: The City’s Natural Resources from an Environmental Perspective, page 476 (Macmillan; , 9780023518102)Certainly the magnitude of megalopolitan or ecumenopolitan problems tends to overwhelm the individual who is a perspective participant.
• 1976: The Planner, volume 62, page 25 (Royal Town Planning Institute)‘The ecumenopolitan concept’, said Professor Dix of Nottingham, apparently proposing the ‘dilution’ motion, ‘implies the better use of resources, perhaps a greater use of telecommunications and electronics, and properly planned transport systems. It means a better and more readily accessible countryside…’.
• 1976: Leman Group Inc, Great Lakes Megalopolis: From Civilization to Ecumenization, page 97 (Ministry of State, Urban Affairs, Canada; , 9780660003764)In many, many areas on megalopolitan government, the next time a meeting of this sort gets together and begins to think basically, they are going to be talking about ecumenopolitan government and people are going to be saying: “Ecumenopolis, who needs it? Ecumenopolis, it doesn’t exist and never will.”
• 1979: Albert N. Cousins and Hans Nagpaul, Urban Life: The Sociology of Cities and Urban Society, page 587 (Wiley; , 9780471030263)The very largest concentrations in the entire complex will have to be rescued from simply more sprawl, because suburbanization and exurbanization continue to bring added pressures on the core. The best way to do this, Doxiadis thought, is to engineer the establishment of new metropolitan areas at only a moderate distance away as nodes in a hierarchical pattern suitable to the ecumenopolitan phase of human history. Then, in an oracular manner looking even beyond the “world-spanning city,” Doxiadis saw mankind of the future even moving in the direction of an extraterrestrial Cosmopolis, “the city of the Cosmos.”⁵⁶
• 1980: International Journal for Housing Science and Its Applications, volume 4, page vi (Pergamon)While this is the scale which, for many, is still difficult to perceive or accept, there are a number of signs that such ecumenopolitan systems are very much in the making.¹⁰ The two world wars are but consequences of frictions arising between two or three near-global spatial/operational arrangements dating back to fifteenth and sixteenth century concepts and to the systems which such concepts spurred.
• 1987: J. F. Brotchie, Peter Geoffrey Hall, and Peter Wesley Newton eds., The Spatial Impact of Technological Change, pages 413⁽¹⁾ and 414⁽²⁾ (Croom Helm; , 9780709950066)⁽¹⁾ For the mid 1980s I estimate that at least one million adults belong to the ecumenopolitan stratum; several times as many are in the educational stream with ambitions to join them.⁽²⁾ Iranians were graduated from North American universities with motivations that are virtually indistinguishable from their classmates, but their command of Asian languages and their entrepreneurship generates a backflow of ecumenopolitan commitments to Asia.
• 2007: Baleshwar Thakur, George Pomeroy, Chris Cusack, and Sudhir K Thakur eds., City, Society, and Planning, volume 1: “City”, page 16 (Concept Publishing Company

• The prospective urban implies, therefore, ecumenopolitan order.
• 2007: Peter Droege, The Renewable City: A Comprehensive Guide to an Urban Revolution, page 39 (John Wiley & Sons; , 9780470019252)The modern suburb is a logical corollary of this fossil fuel powered narrative and expresses it in holographic detail. And its ascendancy continues: suburbs and their appurtenances mushroom at and between the fringes of the world’s metropolitan cores, following Doxiadess’ ecumenopolitan premonitions with the precision of a large oil spill …

Noun

1. An inhabitant of an ecumenopolis, especially one actively involved in its political arena.
• 1974: Spenser W. Havlick, The Urban Organism: The City’s Natural Resources from an Environmental Perspective, page 475 (Macmillan; , 9780023518102)The danger of this pattern is of course that the ecumenopolitan becomes spread very thin among various roles and locations. As a citizen of the world we see more of the whole picture but become frustrated in trying to find where the need is greatest so we can “plug in.”
• 1987: J. F. Brotchie, Peter Geoffrey Hall, and Peter Wesley Newton eds., The Spatial Impact of Technological Change, pages 419⁽¹⁾ and 420⁽²⁾ (Croom Helm; , 9780709950066)⁽¹⁾ A large share of the ecumenopolitans may not take the trouble to operate their own vehicles.⁽²⁾ The automata and the ecumenopolitans are inherently symbiotic, but the new breed will be specialists who are virtually bionic.
• 1991: J. F. Brotchie ed., Cities of the 21st Century: New Technologies and Spatial Systems, page 379 (Longman Cheshire; , 9780470217429)Table 1 The ecumenopolitans: the world-serving roles
• 1997: Nan Ellin, Architecture of Fear, page 228 (Princeton Architectural Press

• In 1962 Yona Friedman predicted that the entire world population would be agglomerated into 1000 big cities.⁵ Also in the early 1960s Constantinos A. Doxiadis envisaged an “ecumenopolis”⁶ consisting of groups of major cities linked to each other (by air traffic and electronic communications) more firmly than to the surrounding districts of the countries in which they are located. A global elite, crossing national boundaries daily, would be the ultimate form of civilization. According to metabolist theory set out by Kisho Kurokawa in 1967, each of these cities would be a “metapolis,” an urban unit for ecumenopolitans built in “super-architecture”: “A Metapolis will be a junction point of mobile information. It will also be the place from which directives are issued.”⁷ Singapore is the apotheosis of Metabolism.