ABSTRACT
Chapter I discussed the founding of the City; chapter II described the City in spatial terms; and chapter III explored the concept of time that informs the City. The present essay asks a more organic question: How does the City grow? In order to do this, this essay starts relatively small and considers the so-called valuation of start-up companies, the art of assessing the possibilities of a company, represented by its common stock, which has in recent years financed the construction of the wave of new businesses collectively referred to (with varying degrees of enthusiasm or irony) as the “new economy.”1 The inquiry is undertaken, not so much with a view to its answer, but as an object and occasion for critical reflection on the deeper structures of our economy, the grammar through which our desires are combined and our future constructed.
