Making Fukuoka Smart East a reality: "Now" and "in the future"
The population of Fukuoka City exceeded 1.63 million last year, making it one of the few cities in Japan with a declining population that continues to grow.
The city has a high percentage of young people and women, and 96.2% of citizens answered "easy to live in" in the 2022 Citizen's Attitude Survey. It is precisely because Fukuoka City is known as a vibrant and livable city where people come and go that the city is boldly taking on the challenge of "Fukuoka Smart East," a future town planning project that can address various social issues even in its early stages.
As such, we will introduce what we have been working on and what we are aiming for in the future at "Fukuoka Smart East" in a series of three articles.
Part 1: Review of the past and future prospects
Part 2: How will we cope with the declining birthrate and aging population?
Part 3: How will we respond to climate change?
Part 1: Review of the past and future prospects
[What's Fukuoka Smart East?]
Fukuoka has launched "Fukuoka Smart East" as a project to create a smart city, a model city that can be proud of its future, where comfortable, high-quality lifestyles and innovation are created and sustainable development is achieved by solving various serious global social issues such as the declining birthrate, aging population and climate change through the implementation of cutting-edge technologies and groundbreaking ideas.
Our first step is to realize this project in the Hakozaki area, which is located near the two major urban centers of Tenjin and Hakata, with good accessibility and a vast green field that is ideal for implementing innovations. We have conducted various demonstrative experiments, exchanged opinions with experts, and held study sessions and events in industry, academia, and the private sector to clarify what is required of future local communities and the difficulties of implementation, as well as to deepen understanding of innovations that could be solutions.
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We have received many comments from citizens, local residents, and private businesses that have been involved in these efforts. They have high expectations for Fukuoka Smart East, and Fukuoka City will continue to firmly promote Fukuoka Smart East in order to meet these expectations.
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[What will happen/what will we do now?]
Changes in social conditions caused by the impact of various social issues have given rise to a variety of new values, including the SDGs.
Among them, new values such as "well-being" that enables each individual to feel healthy and happy in mind and body, "inclusive" that allows diverse people to respect each other, and "decarbonization" to cope with various crises caused by climate change have been attracting attention in recent years.
In promoting Fukuoka Smart East, it is very important to take these new values into account.
Therefore, Fukuoka City is promoting the following measures in addition to Fukuoka Smart East in order to create a city that responds to new values.
- Create an inclusive environment where everyone can live comfortably and safely
- Fukuoka Art Next, which will create new values
- The 10,000 Trees Project to create a forest in the heart of the city where people can feel rested and enriched.
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As described above, Fukuoka Smart East aims to create a warm and welcoming city that is capable of responding to new values through a variety of measures and that is connected to the local community while adding "technical assistance" to the traditional self-help, mutual-assistance, and public-support to solve problems through the implementation of innovations.
Part 2: "How will we cope with the declining birthrate and aging population?"
Part 3: "How will we respond to climate change?"
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