agoraphilia means the love of public life, crowds, and activity. Lexicurio rates it Sui generis — a strength score of 87 out of 100.
Why “agoraphilia” is a great word
AGORAPHILIA — [Noun] A pronounced attraction to the bustling energy of public assemblies, marketplaces, and crowds, or to vast, open expanses. From the Ancient Greek ἀγορά (agorá, "public assembly, marketplace") + φιλία (philía, "love, friendship"). Unlike agoraphobia, which denotes a pathological fear of such spaces, or sociophilia, which implies a general love of companionship, agoraphilia is the deliberate immersion in the collective human current. It is the magnetic pull of a sun-drenched plaza thick with strangers, the kinetic solace of a festival crowd moving as one organism, and the expansive peace found on a boundless, windswept plain—a quiet testament that the self finds its reflection not in solitude, but in the hum of the multitude.
Etymology
From Ancient Greek ἀγορά (agorá, “assembly”) + φιλία (philía, “love”).
noun
- The love of public life, crowds, and activity.“First, the Athenians suffered from an acute case of agoraphilia. They seemed to center a large portion of their daily lives around the activities of the public gathering places; hence, the temples and the agora would be the most likely places at which the relatives might see the slayer.”
- The love of wide open empty spaces.“Its spacious market places, with their architectural colonnades, and its suburban gymnasia, ringed by trees, evidence not agoraphobia but agoraphilia — love of openness — wherever it was possible.”
- The love of the exotic and new.“If it is also a disguised form of agoraphilia, a desire of other other places, it follows that the arena of its poetics is public space and its re-imagining".”
- A global perspective; a viewpoint that seeks to encompass the world.“This agoraphilia, this altitudinous, map-maker's vision is with him from start to finish of his life's work.”
- A political stance that seeks to promote individual rights and public participation.“The administration's philosophy might be described as "agoraphilia": love of the marketplace. It was summed up in the 1985 budget: "This strategy recognizes that most of the decisions about using and producing energy in this country are made by millions of individuals ..."”