The Problem with Coruscant (Planet Cities Explained)

What happens when a city never ends? No farmland. No oceans. Just a planet-wide urban machine — towers stacked 5,000 levels deep.

This video explores the ecumenopolis, a concept from the 1960s by Constantinos Doxiadis, who believed humanity might urbanize the entire Earth.

Through Coruscant (Star Wars) and Trantor (Asimov’s Foundation) — fully urban planets with over a trillion inhabitants — we ask: is a planet-city truly possible, or destined to collapse?

We break down Coruscant’s layers — from the political Emergent Level, to the criminal Underworld, to heat-choked machine tiers — exposing the brutal logistics of feeding, cooling, powering, and moving a civilization with zero nature.

Doxiadis imagined a fractal, human-scaled ecumenopolis, grown through Ekistics, with walking-distance cores and protected green lungs.

So — could a planet-city work through flexibility over control?

Or would it, like Rome, collapse the moment the grain stops flowing?

Since it was first introduced into Star Wars lore, I've always been fascinated by the idea of Coruscant.

It was even the name of the head table at our wedding, where all the tables were named after Star Wars planets.