Publications

- August 1, 2016; Vol. 3, Number 8

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City Limits: Silicon Valley entrepreneurs aim to create a prototype municipality of the future

by Mike Consol

Entrepreneurs keep getting more ambitious, especially those in the technology space. It seems there is a pending technological solution for all that ails humanity and the environment the surrounds us.

Now a pair of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs is aiming to tackle the most essential component of a functional society — the city, the very locus of economic activity and job and wealth creation. They are the places where real estate, infrastructure, energy and other investment opportunities are concentrated.

One half of that ambitious tandem is Sam Altman, president of Y Combinator, an organization that funds early stage startups. His partner in urban planning is Adora Cheung, the cofounder of the now-defunct startup Homejoy, a house-cleaning company that fell short of its customer acquisition targets. In their quest to create a prototype smart city, Altman and Cheung have used a blog post (https://blog.ycombinator.com/new-cities) to proffer their concept and to, they hop

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