Ekistic Units
See also: Human settlement hierarchyDoxiadis believed that the conclusion from biological and social experience was clear: to avoid chaos we must organize our system of life from Anthropos (individual) to Ecumenopolis (global city) in hierarchical levels, represented by human settlements. So he articulated a general hierarchical scale with fifteen levels of Ekistic Units :
Names of Units and Population Scale (final version, from C.A.Doxiadis' last book, ACTION for Human Settlements, p. 186, Athens Center of Ekistics, 1976): Note: The population figures below are for Doxiadis' ideal future ekistic units for the year 2100 at which time he estimated (in 1968) that Earth would achieve zero population growth at a population of 50,000,000,000 with human civilization being powered by fusion energy.
- Anthropos – 1
- room – 2
- house – 5
- housegroup (hamlet) – 40
- small neighborhood (village) – 250
- neighborhood – 1,500
- small polis (town) – 10,000
- polis (city) – 75,000
- small metropolis – 500,000
- metropolis – 4 million
- small megalopolis – 25 million
- megalopolis – 150 million
- small eperopolis – 750 million
- eperopolis – 7,500 million
- Ecumenopolis – 50,000 million
In comparison the United Nations population estimate, for the year 2100, at a constant growth rate, Uganda would form a small eperopolis, with a population of about 1 billion people, in an area of about 250,000 km² (4600 people/km², comparable to greater Tokyo today).
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