company can be thought of as its “metabolism” while expenses can be thought of as its “maintenance” costs. In biology, metabolic rate scales sublinearly with size, so as organisms increase in size the supply of energy cannot keep up with the maintenance demands of cells, leading to the eventual cessation of growth. On the other hand, the social metabolic rate in cities scales superlinearly, so as cities grow the creation of social capital increasingly outpaces the demands of maintenance, leading to faster and faster open-ended growth.
