agoropolis, n. a city comprised entirely of retail outlets, and lacking the public services, homes, and other facilities that would support its citizens.
From the Greek agora, marketplace, and polis, city.
The concept of the agoropolis was created by British writer Monty Monteith, who wrote futuristic fiction in the 1940s.
Monteith had enjoyed the depth of classical education appropriate to his class, and during his time abroad, spent many months on Mykonos and Crete, as well as mainland Greece.
Few know if it was this, or the mysterious months he spent in Lapland during the winter of 1938—a period for which he was largely unable to account upon his return to England—that prompted him to conjure the agoropolis. Many believe it was a combination of the two.
Monteith's agoropolis was a cold, fractured anti-idyll, where the citizens had no homes or shelters, and were trapped in a maze of shops from birth (usually on a street, beneath a tree manicured by the Keepers of Streetscapes—the retail equivalent of council workers, employed by wealthy merchants) until death (usually in some dank bargain basement).
So entrenched, the citizens could do nothing but pursue purchases. They spent their days trawling market stalls, eating street food as they walked between merchants' stores, trying things out and on, and attempting to gain the attention of uninterested store clerks.
In an intriguing twist, the citizens of Monteith's agoropolis had no money—since they had no employment—and thus were destined to window-shop for their entire lives.
They were able to obtain food by using a complex system of accounts, like modern-day tabs, with a restricted number of food sellers.
Yet they were never able to purchase or own the items that they were forced, by circumstances beyond their control, to spend their lives focused upon.
Scholars have since addressed the similarities between Monteith's agoropolis and Dante's Inferno in papers of varying merit.
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