Writer: Joseph Burney
Editor: Jason Shin
The release of 1999’s Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace introduced the world to a fundamentally different Star Wars galaxy than it had once known. Whereas the films of the Original Trilogy launched us into an escapist world of fantastical space opera, the settings and themes of the Prequel Trilogy were much more reminiscent of the real world. That is, while the moral dichotomy of the evil empire and noble rebels in A New Hope clearly derived many of its elements from its real-world equivalents in Nazi Germany and the Viet Cong, The Phantom Menace is distinct in its direct role as an analogy for American foreign policy in the 90s, and as a critique of American economic hegemony at large. It should come as no surprise then that George Lucas, the mind behind Star Wars, described the malicious Chancellor Palpatine as “Nixon-esque” and that the devious orchestration of unregulated corporate power is what ultimately tears the Galactic Republic apart.
This might have all been lost on you as soon as Qui Gon Jin and his padawan Obi-Wan Kenobi landed their starships on the most extraordinarily vast cosmopolitan conglomerate you could possibly fathom. They landed on the oddly NYC-esque planet-city, the ecumenopolis of Coruscant.
Coruscant from Space, Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace
Coruscant, however, is but another instance of Lucas’s endeavour to have Star Wars mirror the real world. It is an endlessly sprawling conurbation whose 1999 rendering included multiple not-so-discrete inserts of New York City. It is perhaps for that reason that when I first set eyes on Coruscant, my first thought was how such a civilization would look on Earth. If you’re unfamiliar with Coruscant, it is the financial and administrative hub of the Star Wars galaxy, and more importantly for us, an ecumenopolis; the entire planet, from its surface to its core, is one colossal city. Every inch of the planet is urbanized, every parcel of land buried in unending layers of the Star Wars equivalents of concrete and durasteel.
The concept of an ecumenopolis that we see depicted in Star Wars is not an original idea of Lucas, nor is it unique to the science fiction or fantasy genres. The term was coined by Greek city planner Constantinos Apostolou Doxiadis in the 60s, who posited that the rapid city growth he observed at that time would “eventually lead from megalopolis to Ecumenopolis, a single planet-wide city including all Earth’s inhabitants”. He further elaborated that “This evolution is inevitable, nor… is it desirable to avoid it”. In this sense, we can see it is inherent to the concept of an ecumenopolis the wonder of its implementation in the real world. How many people would dwell in our worldwide city, and what might the economic dynamics be in this titanic civilization we’d call home? Pursuant to the theories of Doxiadis, is it truly inevitable that our urban areas agglomerate beyond national borders, becoming a modern Pangaea for all?
The first layer of Coruscant, Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
First, let us properly explore Coruscant. It sits at the center of a galaxy where planets serve reserved economic functions: the desert planet of Geonosis serves as the galaxy’s military manufacturing hub, the temperate planet of Ghorman harbors the silk industry, the water planet of Kamino produces clones, and so on and so forth. Planets in the Star Wars galaxy rarely stray away from this routine, simple economic organization– that is, except for Coruscant. The cosmopolitan world of ~3 trillion, according to a Star Wars guidebook, is the capital of the galactic government (once the Galactic Republic, then the Galactic Empire). However, it otherwise serves no particular economic purpose. Rather, Coruscant seems to reap the benefits of the galaxy’s economic organization. The layers upon layers of Coruscantians, the Jedi Order, the Republic Senate, and its Imperial counterpart all enjoy a sort of comfort on Coruscant, unburdened by the need to produce some niche commodity that one-industry planets face. They never have to deal with the pains of a commodity’s volatility and elasticity. Whereas the Geonoscians are doomed once the galactic government stops expanding its army, no one is bothered on Coruscant. As you’d expect, this creates a sort of estrangement from the happenings and sufferings of the galaxy for Coruscantians. Lucas makes it a point to portray how out-of-touch Coruscant’s major parties—these being the Jedi Order and the Galactic Republic—are with the galaxy’s affairs, an irony ultimately causing their respective downfalls.
What an unrealistic, myopic world, right? Sure, Coruscant is an economically viable society in the world of Star Wars, but only because of its incredibly privileged position at the center of a galaxy in which planets essentially serve a single industrial function. Such an ecumenopolis could never form in the real world– only, this is not a fault of George Lucas. In fact, his portrayal of an ecumenopolis in Coruscant is not absurd at all. In terms of mapping out the real world’s geopolitical and economic dynamics onto a galactic scale, Lucas got the interdependent civilization model perfect. We, too, enjoy a naive worldview made possible by our privileged position in the general economic system dominant on Earth. As Americans, we live in Earth’s Coruscant.
See, the aforementioned economic organization of the Star Wars galaxy — in which one-industry planets are exploited for their respective commodity, which is purchased and enjoyed by the galactic hub of Coruscant — is nearly identical to the core-periphery organization of the nations of Earth. In terms of the world-systems analysis put forth by economic historian Immanuel Wallerstein, the urbanized countries with capital-intensive economies are at the geoeconomic “core” of the world, while countries dominated by low-skill, labor-intensive industries sit in the world’s periphery. In America, this is the economic organization by which you likely work in the tertiary service sector or quaternary sector dispensing information, while the products you consume are produced in periphery or semi-periphery countries such as India and Mexico. This economic contrast can even manifest within a nation: in China, the prosperous coastal metropolises of Shanghai and Beijing operate as economic cores of finance and administration, while the interior regions of Gansu and Guizhou (among others) supply the raw materials and labor The core-periphery economic organization reproduces itself at smaller and smaller scales, from that galaxy far away, to Earth, to even the inner-workings of China. These economic relations allow for and produce the kind of urban expanses we look for in an Earthly equivalent to Coruscant. They make for the urban conglomerates of New York City and Shanghai that are the most densely populated major cities in the United States and China, respectively.
A suspiciously NYC-esque angle of Coruscant, Star Wars: Episode II: Attack of the Clones
It should not be surprising that the economics of the ecumenopolis that is Coruscant closely resemble its equivalents in the real world, from New York City to Shanghai. These cities, then, are our nearest examples of an Earth ecumenopolis. That we have at least somewhat close examples of Coruscant on Earth might lead you to believe an Earthly ecumenopolis is among our future possibilities. Yet, it is exactly because the fictional Coruscant finds its closest resemblance in the largest cities of Earth’s superpowers that Earth will never become an ecumenopolis. China, America, and Coruscant all depend upon the same leveraged position of economic privilege for the wealth of investment they’re able to pour into their sprawling cosmopolitan areas. New York City stands as the financial capital of the world, Shanghai the financial capital of China, all the while the scaffolding propping up their esteemed positions lies in foreign countries and economies.
Graphic By: Meredith Whitcher
Just as the ecumenopolis of Coruscant is only able to encompass the entire planet because of the exploitation of planets like Geonosis, Fondor, and Balmorra, economic dynamics such as those within China’s Belt-and-Road initiative allow for the cosmopolitan bubble of Shanghai. It is precisely because we live in a world divided by the core-periphery structure, by the distinction between the US and Mexico or Coruscant and Hoth, that the naivety of the privileged civilization can persist. So while we already live in a world with the same economic dynamics as those within Star Wars, no, we will never live in an Earthly ecumenopolis.
Featured Image Thomas Habr by on Unsplash
