<i>Recently, YC began planning a pilot project to test the feasibility of building its own experimental city. It would lie somewhere in America, or perhaps abroad, and would be optimized for technological solutions: it might, for instance, permit only self-driving cars. “It could be a college town built out of YC, the university of the future,” Altman said. “A hundred thousand acres, fifty to a hundred thousand residents. We crowdfund the infrastructure and establish a new and affordable way of living around concepts like ‘No one can ever make money off of real estate.’ ” He emphasized that it was just an idea—but he was already looking at potential sites.</i><p>I've been thinking about the feasibility of this as well recently. A good college town has a component of informality, collegiality that binds its residents together.<p>Munich may be the best example I can think of: a college town dating back to medieval times, scaled up to a city of 4M+ souls. TUM and ABDK seem much more intertwined with the real-world urban design and planning of infrastructure and public spaces, than say MIT and RISD. Not to mention the crafts of cheese, bread, beer making, etc!