Global city

A global city, also called world city or sometimes alpha city or world center, is a city generally considered to be an important node in the global economic system. The concept comes from geography and urban studies, and the idea that globalization can be understood as largely created, facilitated, and enacted in strategic geographic locales according to a hierarchy of importance to the operation of the global system of finance and trade.

The most complex of these entities is the "global city", whereby the linkages binding a city have a direct and tangible effect on global affairs through socio-economic means. The use of "global city", as opposed to "megacity", was popularized by sociologist Saskia Sassen in her 1991 work, The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo; although the term "world city", which refers to cities that control a disproportionate amount of global business, dates to at least the May 1886 description of Liverpool, by The Illustrated London News.Patrick Geddes also used the term "world city" later in 1915. More recently, the term has been described as being synonymous with a city's influence and 'financial capital', with other factors becoming less relevant.

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, 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.

World city (disambiguation)

A world city is a city deemed to be an important node point in the global economic system.

World city may also refer to: