Term coined in the 1960s by Greek city planner Constantinos Doxiadis to mean a continent-spanning city. Doxiadis predicted that, given contemporary trends in urban development, a European eperopolis which would grow out of the “Blue Banana”, a corridor of urbanisation that stretches from northern England to Milan. (He later became more ambitious and invented the word “ecumenopolis” to mean a world-spanning city.)

Ecumenopolis (from Greek: οικουμένη, meaning world, and πόλις (polis) meaning city, thus a city made of the whole world; pl. ecumenopolises or ecumenopoleis) is a word invented in 1967 by the Greek city planner Constantinos 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 and population growth trends.