Our search for startups boosting the liveability of our cities

We’re actively backing ventures that are working to create safe, sustainable and accessible towns and cities, that offer efficient and liveable urban environments fit for the future — if that sounds like you, get in touch!

Each year, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) publishes their updated liveability rankings for some of the world’s largest cities. Until being unseated by Vienna in 2018, Melbourne enjoyed a record seven years as number one. The global liveability index grades cities in five categories: stability; healthcare; culture and environment; education; and infrastructure. For high-ranking cities, their scores serve as a source of pride. For lower-ranking cities, their scores could serve as a helpful indicator of where improvements can be made. Recent events such as the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the cost-of-living crisis have caused a shakedown of the index in recent years. If you are the founder of a technology start-up working to boost the liveability of our cities, we would love to hear from you!

Here are my thoughts on how innovation and technology in the built world can influence liveability in the future.

Stability

We face a paradox when it comes to safety. Simply put, although we may desire a world perfectly free of crime and suffering, the authoritarianism required to create such a world is undesirable to many. Privacy commonly emerges as a concern in this area, with different cultures tolerating different degrees of invasiveness. For example, although one group might see a “social score” as a useful tool for accountability and social order, another might see it as a form of paternalism. Is there a way of satisfying both the proponents and exponents of surveillance culture at the same time? Could we make use of the troves of data now available through surveillance systems by anonymising it and improving decision making in our cities? Enter Route Konnect, who do just this for the purposes of tracking and optimising traffic congestion, a prime culprit in degrading the air quality in city centres.

Healthcare

Healthcare has been an area of interest for Pi Labs over a number of years. Back in 2019 I shared my thoughts on how technology enables wellness in buildings. Early last year, our research team completed a case study on healthcare real estate. We have since pursued a number of investments in health and wellness within the built environment and expect it to continue as a theme in our rigorous research agenda. Although some of our exciting new investments in this space are yet to be announced, we can share that our vision for the future of liveable cities is one where data enables prevention-first approaches to public health at the street and building level, and where innovations in commercial real estate and micro fulfilment allow a more seamless distribution of healthcare services and medicine. We expect such innovations to reduce the incidence of preventable disease and consequently both free up the resources of our highly strained healthcare services and improve the all-round wellbeing of those in need of healthcare. For example, we have recently announced our investment in Cure (see below), and look forward to shortly announcing investment in a start-up helping to address the 7 million premature deaths each year caused by air pollution.

Culture and environment

During the coronavirus pandemic, a number of cities took a significant hit to their culture and environment scores as a result of social distancing measures and restrictions. Although many cities have returned to normal, the pandemic highlighted the fragility of our cultural institutions and social scene — with many restaurants and bars closing permanently as a result of extended lockdowns. Organisational culture has also emerged as a topic in the wake of a recalibration toward more flexible working arrangements. Hybrid collaboration and productivity tools such as Slack, Zoom, MS Teams, Monday.com and our very own Flown sustained many roles relegated to a remote setting. eCommerce and home entertainment platforms such as Amazon Prime, Gorillas, Netflix and a plethora of others made home confinement a little more tolerable. What future innovations will emerge to improve the resilience of our cultural institutions during unforeseen crises? What innovations will allow us to maintain immersive interactions with distant friends, family and colleagues? Finally, what kind of innovations will emerge to enable us to make better use of our built world and cultural artefacts, such as navigating an unfamiliar supermarket with ease or touring the Roman Colosseum as it was 1,900 years ago with the help of extended reality..?

Education

During recent Pi Labs research into the metaverse and extended reality, we conducted a deep dive into Corps Security’s deployment of MOONHUB as a VR-enabled training solution. eLearning, the previous wave of technology-enabled learning, often struggles to replicate immersive, real-life situational learning. On the other hand, real-life training is expensive and hard to scale. For Corps Security, it was estimated that sending all of their security staff for a three-day annual face-to-face training programme would cost nearly £1 million each year. Virtual reality is offered as a happy medium — from security to healthcare, engineering to military, and beyond. VR doesn’t come without its challenges. In some cases it still struggles to replicate real-life experience. One such example is junior US Air Force pilots with low ‘airmanship’, who haven’t yet developed the muscle memory of operating a $100 million piece of hardware hurtling through the air at mach three. Another is the feeling of motion sickness experienced by some VR users. How will educational institutions within our global cities be able to offer previously unparalleled levels of immersive learning to their students? What will this mean for the jobs of the future, how they are executed, and how cities can best attract these individuals?

Infrastructure

Combining the likes of housing availability, transport infrastructure and utilities, the EIU’s infrastructure indicators are very topical in 2022. Our research team have shared a number of insights around housing quality and affordability over the past year or so, as well as energy and water consumption in our buildings. We have also made investments within these categories, including Generation Home (facilitating home ownership through fractionalised home lending); Demand Logic (a sensor and data-led solution to improve energy efficiency in buildings); and Switchee (a smart home innovation incorporating sensors for energy consumption data and indoor environment quality). With the cost-of-living crisis impacting many communities around the world, and many governments taking backward steps in their environmental sustainability progress in order to meet energy demand, we are very interested in technological solutions to these problems.

We are currently seeking out new technology start-ups working to improve our relationship with the built world and its impact on our communities, businesses and the environment. If that sounds like you or somebody you know, there’s no better time to apply for the eleventh edition of our Growth Programme (beginning February 2023). Application deadline is 28 October 2022.

See more details and how to apply here.