Archinect - News

Disruption: Y Combinator's urban techno-suprematism and the new Trump presidential era, ft. special guest Fred Scharmen on Archinect Sessions #88

2016-11-10T15:47:00-05:00

Recorded in the wake of Tuesday's election results, this episode got a bit emotional. Fred Scharmen—designer, researcher, and assistant professor at Morgan State University's School of Architecture and Planning in Baltimore—joins us to discuss the potentials and pitfalls of a technocratic urbanism, and whether the former king of cat memes can really offer anything to cities. Our conversation is largely in response to Fred's recent piece for Archinect, "Architects: If You Don't Start Disrupting Urbanism, Silicon Valley Will Do It for You.", with reflections on how technology and media are responsible for our current political climate.

Listen to episode 88 of Archinect Sessions, "Disruption":

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Cheezburger founder/CEO joins YCombinator's 'New Cities' project

2016-10-28T13:44:00-04:00

YCombinator, the Silicon Vallley start-up accelerator and investment firm behind Airbnb and Dropbox, announced its entrepreneurial reach into city-building this past summer, with the goal to develop "a city for humans" with reduced housing expenses and a simplified planning code.

Some SV investor-speak aside, YC's so-called "New Cities Project" doesn't sound particularly controversial to anyone who likes cities and wants them to support better lives. But there is a bit of learned defensiveness in YC's blog post announcing the venture: "We’re not interested in building 'crazy libertarian utopias for techies.'"

Now, they might have a bit more explaining to do. Ben Huh—founder and CEO of I Can Has Cheezburger?, the meme-generating website that birthed lolcats—has joined the urban utopian pursuit as an "Explorer", as Huh announced on Medium earlier this week:

For the next 6-months, I am joining YCombinator Research’s New Cities project as an Explorer. My goal? Create an open, repeatable sy...

What's the newest project for Silicon Valley investors? Building cities

2016-06-28T17:39:00-04:00

Y Combinator, the startup accelerator and investment firm that helped produce Airbnb, Dropbox, and Instacart, is embarking on a creation project arguably more ambitious than any company. "We want to build cities," wrote Y Combinator partner Adora Cheung and President Sam Altman...the project aims to develop ways to reduce housing expenses by 90 percent and to develop a city code of laws simple enough to fit on 100 pages of text. Eventually the plan is to actually produce a prototype city.

"We’re not trying to build a utopia for techies," says Cheung, the project’s director and the former CEO of failed housecleaning startup Homejoy. "This is a city for humans."

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