What makes Coruscant as a planet wide city impossible?

Question

Can you give me proof rooted in physical laws and mathematical equations?

Answer 1

Impossible is a nasty word for scientists and engineers. There are only challenges. Some big ones that might make a global city impractical:
(1) Where does the food come from?
- Potentially solvable using hydroponics
(2) How is oxygen replenished / carbon dioxide eliminated?
- Potenially solvable with organic filters
(3) What do you do with the waste (poop, garbage)?
- Advanced recycling efforts might solve.
(4) What do you do with all the heat?
- This is the biggie. (1) - (3) are actually being worked on now for artificial human habits (eg. Biosphere2). But on a global scale heat (from electronic devices, to human beings themselves) must be dissapaited or else the planet (and thus your city) will heat up.

Answer 2

Well Cosmo struck the nail on the head pretty much, all I can do is claim that's what I was going to say! On Earth cities tend not to be able to support themselves and have food transported in every day, waste transported out etc - its a huge logistical feat - just go to your city council and ask them if their job is easy and they'll tell you.

With nothing but city this would raise problems - however if an empire is so advance then its conceivable that there would be worlds which did little else but produce food stuffs, fuels etc - we would also expect them to be far more efficient in the future but if interstellar transport could be made cheap enough then such a cityplanet is not beyond the realms of imagination. You would need a huge infrastructure of other planets first though - for cities like London, Tokyo and New York to become what they are there had to be thriving business and efficient systems to keep their citizens fed, and housed.

The main problem is the population would continue to increase and no matter how much food was available it would soon outstrip supply and overcrowding could also course virulent plagues which spread quickly - and with modern travel you'd expect on such a futuristic world I expect it would spread even more quickly.

Answer 3

All you need are jobs and food. In the Star Wars universe most planets seem to be underpopulated so can export food. Also, with droid labor a few people can farm an entire continent.

Being the galactic capital you would have thousands of politicians who would need lots of staff and would have lots of service needs. In addition to these millions of jobs, their would be galactic corporations that wanted to base here. Financial institutions would also have to at least have offices around. All these high paid professionals would be able to support millions more in the service sector. That doesn't even count tourism and manufacturing.

In the Star Wars universe planet cities are inevitable.

Answer 4

In the Star Wars universe, they have fast, efficient interstellar travel that is the analog of modern air transport. While it is difficult to sustain a city using air transport alone, it is not impossible (e.g. Berlin airlift). Furthermore, Coruscant could have "farm planets" in its own solar system. So, I'd say it's not impossible.