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 system for rapid cityforming that maximize human potential. It is a vastness and complex challenge — and one that makes me so happy that I want to tap dance to work. Like any other epic journey, we’ll start small and learn fast: Everything we learn, we will be publishing online. [...]
And to those who may question Huh's competencies in this regard, you're still invited to the ribbon-cutting ceremony:
Many will wonder why a guy known for cat pictures and memes is running a project to build the cities of the future. I’m here not only to prove them wrong, but to include the naysayers in the future of improving our cities. We’ll kill skepticism with inclusion.
What's the worst that could happen?
3 Comments
That Medium post sincerely needed an editor. I recall half a dozen misspellings or grammatical mistakes.
That kitten is adorbs.
"The problem-scape is vast."
Seriously, I don't really understand what they're trying to do. But the fact that they feel they have to start with a blank slate - anyone have a bunch of open land to give us? - tells me they don't understand cities at all.
At least Patrik Schumaker is saying he wants to massively re-design cities within their existing context. He's willing to accept the complexity and work with it.
I wonder if Patrik and YCombinator have talked about this? They should.
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