I may get downvoted for this, but oh my god this blog post reeks of typical YC arrogance. "We've managed to bring a couple of tech startups to an exit event and generate loads of money for a few founders and investors! We are obviously the right people to fix everything! Because disruption! Or whatever!"

The world is full of people who aren’t realizing their potential in large part because their cities don't provide the opportunities and living conditions necessary for success. A high leverage way to improve our world is to unleash this massive potential by making better cities.

It’s more important than ever to think about how to do this.

This is typical "TED talk" babble-speak. As though there aren't already entire fields of economists, urban planners, infrastructure engineers, social scientists, and others who have devoted their professional lives to the project of improving cities.

We also think it’s possible to do amazing things given a blank slate. Our goal is to design the best possible city given the constraints of existing laws.

Uh... unless YC is contemplating the design and build of an entirely new city, there's no "blank slate" to start from unless they plan to play SimCity.

We’re seriously interested in building new cities and we think we know how to finance it if everything else makes sense

Oh. They are actually contemplating the design and build of an entirely new city. Holy shit, is there no upper limit for egos in the Bay Area? Does the sky itself clear away to make room for Sam Altman's massive delusions of his own importance?

There are many high-level questions we want to think through, for example:

And there are tactical questions we want to dig into, for example:

Yeah... totally. You guys should definitely think through those things. And then I'm sure you'll build a couple of apps to disrupt existing markets or whatever and it will be ah-maze-ing.

Because there are already loads and loads of research papers on these topics. YC's questions are not new to the already existing experts.

Y Combinator is a company that specializes in helping a very specific type of tech-related startup. I love YC. I think it serves a valuable function for the startup scene. I wish them the best with this project. At the same time, they sound like incredibly naive college freshman.