A Physicist's Statistical Analysis of Cities and Corporations

“When a city doubles in size, it requires an increase in resources of only 85 percent…every measure of economic activity, from construction spending to the amount of bank deposits, increases by approximately 15 percent per capita...

“The modern corporation has an average life span of 40 to 50 years…as the number of employees grows, the amount of profit per employee shrinks…efficiencies of scale are almost always outweighed by the burdens of bureaucracy…the inevitable decline in profit per employee makes large companies increasingly vulnerable to market volatility...

“The impermanence of the corporation illuminates the real strength of the metropolis. Unlike companies, which are managed in a top-down fashion by a team of highly paid executives, cities are unruly places, largely immune to the desires of politicians and planners…cities are valuable because they facilitate human interactions, as people crammed into a few square miles exchange ideas and start collaborations.” -- A Physicist Solves the City, NYTimes, 12/17/2010

A Physicist's Statistical Analysis of Cities and Corporations