Y Combinator's Adora Cheung and Sam Altman posted a job listing on June 27 announcing plans for a research project focused on building cities of the future. The pair explain in their blog post that they want to prepare for an increasingly urbanized world by designing the smartest city possible.
The post urged people with "strong interests and bold ideas in architecture, ecology, economics, politics, technology, urban planning, and much more" to join its team.
The announcement comes as more and more people are flocking to cities around the world.
Data from the World Health Organization reveals that 54% of the world's population lived in cities in 2014, up from 34% in 1960. By 2050, more than two-thirds of people are expected to inhabit urban areas.
Cheung and Altman acknowledge that the wisest way to accommodate that growth in some locations may be to fix existing infrastructure - repairing bridges and re-paving roads, for example. But they note that in other areas, the best choice may be to start over completely.
That ambitious mission to create a new city comes with a slew of questions for the design team Y Combinator hopes to assemble. For instance, Cheung and Altman wonder how cities can help people be happier and more fulfilled, what can be done to encourage residents to take active roles in civic life, and what policies will ensure a city keeps innovating.
The team is already addressing skeptics who point to the project as another sign of Silicon Valley's belief that everything can be solved with technology.
"We want to build cities for all humans - for tech and non-tech people," they write. "We're not interested in building 'crazy libertarian utopias for techies.'"
The company explains it wants to research practical considerations that would make a new city suitable for everyone.
"How can we make and keep housing affordable?" they write. "This is critical to us; the cost of housing affects everything else in a city."
In addition, the team anticipates challenges involving zoning laws and future technologies like driverless cars. Plus, they'll have to consider the effect a new city has on the surrounding community, and whether potential solutions to all of these considerations can be turned into an easy-to-understand guide that others could use going forward.
Before answering those questions, however, Y Combinator has to design its research project.
"We'll publicly share our results, and at the end of the process, we'll decide if it's something we should pursue and at what exact locations," they write. "We're seriously interested in building new cities and we think we know how to finance it if everything else makes sense."
Google's parent company, Alphabet, has hinted at a similar plan in the last several months. Most recently, it partnered with the Department of Transportation to put on a $50 million contest, known as the Smart Cities competition, in which US cities proposed plans to use technology to revolutionize urban transportation. On June 22, Columbus, Ohio was named the winner.
Y Combinator hasn't released any details yet about which cities it might select for its own project. That picture will likely become clearer in the coming year.