A complete metric space without non-trivial separable Lipschitz retracts

Abstract

We construct a complete metric space $M$ of cardinality continuum such that every non-singleton closed separable subset of $M$ fails to be a Lipschitz retract of $M$. This provides a metric analogue to the various classical and recent examples of Banach spaces failing to have linearly complemented subspaces of prescribed smaller density character.

42 pages, 9 figures