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New Cities

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: New Cities

#701

Post by BinaryIdiot »

justin wrote: post #680
ugh123 wrote: post #560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wait, Adora is part of YC? I was really surprised by that too. Looking at her and her co-founder's handling of the shutdown as well as the overall fact that they just couldn't execute (raising money isn't executing). I'm not sure what track record and skills she really brings to this.

I competed with Adora when I was running Exec. Under Adora, Homejoy had impressive execution on the early stage: they were very good at customer acquisition, hiring talented employees, and raising capital. All things that are important in the early stage startups. Homejoy had missteps after that initial period. But sometimes you learn as much or more from failure as you do from success.

> they were very good at customer acquisition

The entire reason they failed was because they were paying more for customers than they were getting in return and even more importantly they were not retaining customers very well. It was a bleeding ship for a very, very long time until it went bust.

I could be great at customer acquisition no matter what the product if I'm losing a lot of money on each acquisition. Typically people hold up metrics such as NPR or usage as far more important than installs / initial acquisitions.

> Homejoy had missteps after that initial period. But sometimes you learn as much or more from failure as you do from success.

While I certainly agree from the latter (I know the very first project I ever lead was a HUGE failure and one of the most amazing learning experiences of my life) I'm not sure that necessarily qualifies someone to give start-ups advice. Sure you can tell them how you fucked up but without real experience in applying those lessons it's hard to see much value in it compared to most of the other partners at YC.

Hence why I was curious what her role was. If she's just leading this work or partnering on it then that might be a good fit. But if it's sitting down and giving advice to start-ups I'm not so sure I'd take it without a larger grain of salt than I would most of the other YC folks.

Re: New Cities

#702

Post by prawn »

I think we could see YC or a branch of YC start some sort of enclave with living and working opportunities for member businesses and eventually supporting businesses. Could well see a town spring up around it, depending on how it was done.

Re: New Cities

#703

Post by iwwr »

Kalium wrote: post #401
justinator wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cars are on a pedestal not only because of convenience and speed, but because they're the lowest common denominator. The lowest common denominator? I don't own a car, and I'm sure many other people in my city don't either, so no: it's not the lowest common denominator for us: walking is. Cars are themselves very expensive and require a massive amount of infrastructure to function. Look around a city and think of al…

Have you considered that with infrastructure in place, cars enable an immense amount of individual flexibility? To my mind, it seems somewhat plausible that cars rose to dominance because they enabled individual flexibility for the masses atop pre-existing and extensible infrastructure.

When only few people own cars, those few people have unimaginable freedom.

When everyone owns a car, everyone needs one, cars become an instrument of dependence rather than freedom.

Re: New Cities

#704

Post by krrrh »

krrrh wrote: post #662
skewart wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cities reflect networks effects as strongly as anything, which is why the same cities that were important 100 years ago are, by-and-large, the same cities that are important today: there has been no doubling of exciting, the-place-to-be kind of cities in at least North America despite huge increases in population. I'm not sure how you're defining "important" but I think it's safe to say that the list cities many pe…

To underscore your point a bit more, NYC's population actually declined from 7 to 8 million in the 1970s. I recall a poll done in the mid-eighties where more than half of New York City residents said they would move to a different city if they felt they could. During this period artists and musicians took advantage of the cheap rent and renewed New York's status as cultural center, rebooting the gentrification proces…

Day late typo: population declined from 8 to 7 million obviously.

Re: New Cities

#705

Post by naveen99 »

naveen99 wrote: post #30

Hacker city ? Put me down for a summer home. could you have a city that is a mix of private / public and be a public company listed on a stock exchange. Would be interesting if one could buy stock in the nyc or San Francisco or even a Singapore of the future.

There is disney's reedy creek district in Florida. http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/1987-02-23/business/8701120...

Re: New Cities

#706

Post by ngrilly »

justinator wrote: post #475
Kalium wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered that with infrastructure in place, cars enable an immense amount of individual flexibility? To my mind, it seems somewhat plausible that cars rose to dominance because they enabled individual flexibility for the masses atop pre-existing and extensible infrastructure.

Flexibility? I don't own a car, and haven't for the last decade (and only had a car for maybe a year of my life). This year, I've been driven in a car about four times in > 170 days. So let me talk about flexibility. Think about how much a car costs to buy and own (purchasing, upkeep, insurance, gas, parking, storage) - then put a price on that in hours you work a year. I bet it's a lot! Maybe weeks out of every year…

I lived in a small city on the French Atltantic coast, where I can walk and bike in the city, but I have to drive to go anywhere outside of the city. Having a car is not really an option here; it's mandatory.

I also lived in Paris, where I used public transports exclusively. I hadn't a car.

Honestly, in both cases, there is no free lunch. In Paris, most people don't have a car, but yet they still live far away from their jobs and have hellish commute.

I agree that cars bring a lot of complexity, but stuffing all people in the same area also bring its share of complexity.

Re: New Cities

#707

Post by contingencies »

adamgravitis wrote: post #10

Cities are largely about people, and people are largely about the difficult-to-describe sense of 'opportunity'. Cities reflect networks effects as strongly as anything, which is why the same cities that were important 100 years ago are, by-and-large, the same cities that are important today: there has been no doubling of exciting, the-place-to-be kind of cities in at least North America despite huge increases in popu…

Because of this, our generation is stuck on the wrong side of the supply/demand bit for property.

Speak for yourself. I've tried living in high demand cities the world over and frankly I find the supposed interesting bits are better and more valuable when visiting than living there (food, art and culture, typically). After having great jobs on a few continents I have returned to live in a second tier city in China, and 15 years after my first visit it's still awesome! (Startup costs: ~$0. Food: Great. People: Interesting. Supply-chain: Taobao) Sure, it has its limitations, but we are less than a half-day flight from heaps of interesting countries (half of Asia) and can get to Paris direct in 10 hours. The biggest issue is education for children, but even in the west this is an issue and I believe there will be novel solutions to this problem emerging in the next five years.

Re: New Cities

#708

Post by billbrown »

eru wrote: post #644
DorintheFlora wrote: post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry to have made assumptions. My understanding is that there was no pre-existing infrastructure suitable to cars. The dirt and cobblestone roads that existed were inadequate, to put it nicely. I have read up a good bit on such things and drawn a very different conclusion from you. In the US, personally owned vehicles are critical for sprawling suburbs and rural life. It is a big country with low density. Cars shoul…

The cyclist lobbied for some 'proper' roads to be build at first. The cars found them very useful.

I was curious and found this article - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/bike-blog/2011/aug/1...

Re: New Cities

#709

Post by eru »

billbrown wrote: post #708
eru wrote: post #644

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cyclist lobbied for some 'proper' roads to be build at first. The cars found them very useful.

I was curious and found this article - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/bike-blog/2011/aug/1...

Thanks. Lots of automobile pioneers, like Henry Ford, were also very avid cyclists.

Re: New Cities

#710

Post by famerr »

From: http://timurtatarshaov.me/it-city.html Some period of my life I’ve been traveling many times between two cities in Russia and was entertaining myself guessing what city my next seat train travelers are from. And 9 out of 10 I was right.

Explanation is simple if in one city, let’s say fountains are on the every corner and in another they are not, you would be able to spot the difference between those two persons from the different cities even though you don’t know the exact reason(fountains, rocks, rivers, etc.). So every city does have an energy.

Another thing about the nature is a rivers. Water passing through has a huge impact on the people living nearby. Water takes and refreshes the energy. I’ve been living for some time in the city with two small rivers and could spot the difference compared to the city with the wider river. Water refreshes the people taking the entry and in ‘small rivers’ city people were more mean keeping negatives for longer.

Recently I had a conversation with one girl working in the european conferences organization company and she named several cities where events are more common. The reason for that was transportation hub, including air transport connection mostly and roads as well.

So contemporary cities even though they are not tied to goods transportation along the river are connected to the air lines hubs a lot.

So I would state 3 things: nature, transport, history.

There is one good example of the city made by the power of will of one man, city is St. Petersburg, it is a really good example for research. Such thing as a soil was imported to make it possible.

I’m not saying it’s not possible, but saying you should mind milling of things and the only possible way to have it is to have perfect internal sense.

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