“Woven City” on Mount Fuji: Toyota is building the smart city of the future

“Woven City” on Mount Fuji
Toyota is building the smart city of the future

From Kevin Schulte

Toyota is building the future. The Japanese auto giant is building a huge smart city in Japan that is supposed to set new standards. A fully networked laboratory city to test technology for the future. Is that a role model for Germany?

Robots that help around the house. Autonomous electric cars that meander through the city. Sensor technology that automatically measures our state of health. At the foot of Mount Fuji in Japan, the city of the future should become a reality. On the site of a former Toyota plant, the car company is building its so-called soccer field on an area of ​​around 250 football fields “Woven City”, the “Interwoven City”. 2000 people and a number of new technologies should find a home and network there. The auto giant wants to test new technologies in real operation in the smart city.

One of the pioneers of this idea is the American IT giant IBM. “This is not just about improving the world, but of course there is a very clear economic interest behind it. What is completely legitimate to look at how improvements can be made with digital offers, with broadband solutions, with data availability and data analysis,” says Stadtentwicklungs- expert Michael Lobeck in the ntv podcast “Another thing learned”. Smart cities are digital applications in urban development.

Friedrichshafen as a German pioneer

Michael Lobeck is a freelance consultant and moderator in urban development. In this context, he has been working on the development of smart cities for over 15 years. In 2006 he was part of one of the first projects in Germany. At that time, Telekom announced the T-City competition. Lobeck accompanied the project at the time as an employee of the University of Bonn. “That was one of the first projects in Germany where this term was used widely.”

Friedrichshafen on Lake Constance won the competition. Telekom then invested in expanding the city’s network infrastructure. In addition, the power grid was linked to the broadband network. Selected households were chosen as so-called “futurists” and were given new technology at the time free of charge. An online learning platform was put into operation at three schools, daycare places were allocated via a web portal and a ridesharing system was established. Lobeck looks back on “really trying to develop new solutions” for urban development using digital possibilities.

Household robotics

These self-driving e-vehicles are intended to transport people in the “Woven City”.

(Photo: imago images / Kyodo News)

However, Toyota has far bigger plans. The groundbreaking ceremony for the “Woven City” took place in February. It should be ready in a few years. Little by little, the first people should move to the “Interwoven City”.

Your apartments will be “equipped with the latest assistance technologies such as in-home robotics,” the automaker announced. In addition, the health status of the residents is regularly checked using “sensor-based artificial intelligence”. Only “completely autonomous, emission-free vehicles” run on the roads – from Toyota, of course, understood. The freight traffic should underground occur.

Is this an attempt to solve real problems? Or an expensive PR project? Opinions are generally divided on this question, says expert Michael Lobeck. The success and failure of a smart city are not so easy to quantify. “When it comes to the question of whether a Smart City is successful, it is of course always crucial from whose point of view the question is asked. If you start from a company, it is already successful if enough applications can be sold. If you look from the point of view of citizens and citizens, there are very different points of view. ”

Solve “real problems”

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In essence, it is about solving “real problems” with a smart city solution. “Real problems because I often have the feeling that problems are being solved that are not problems,” explains Lobeck, citing the example of looking for a parking space. “Reducing traffic is a nice thing, but nobody has died from it yet.” According to Lobeck, intelligent street lighting or intelligent trash cans are also part of it. “You can do anything. But I would say that cities have different challenges and problems.”

For Michael Lobeck, for example, this includes social exclusion and a lack of inclusion. Or health care. But such questions are delicate. That is why it is often more about topics such as mobility in smart cities.

“There are a lot of experiments in the field of mobility. Nowadays we have different apps with which we can easily find out when the bus is coming and when the train is coming.” Lobeck points out, however, that all-in-one solutions that combine different modes of transport are not yet fully developed. “That is not so trivial, because the app should also know whether you prefer to take a taxi or bike, even if it is raining a little.” In this case, Michael Lobeck relies on the further development of AI. Artificial intelligence can help to solve such problems and make mobility easier.

Does data protection hold us back?

However, data protection hovers over such issues. Is this perhaps even fundamentally inhibiting the development of smart cities? Under certain circumstances, but that’s not bad for society in Europe, on the contrary, says Lobeck. “In the USA the situation is more favorable for the purely technological development for various reasons. Especially in the consumer area. In China the situation is also more favorable because there is a possibility of access to data that is not available here. But I am skeptical, whether one can then speak of better solutions that come out of it. Technically maybe, but not socially in the long run. “

Germany is far from a smart city on the scale of Toyota’s “Woven City”. Urban development expert Lobeck is convinced that such permits would not be obtained in this country. But is that even necessary? If Toyota’s project proves itself and the Japanese carmaker solves real problems, such a smart city will surely find its way to Germany.

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