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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2025
On May 27 Ernst & Young Institute Japan (EY) released a Japanese-language study, summarizing Japan's over 200 smart city projects. EY's work is especially well timed. Among other recent developments, June 2 saw Apple join a long list of firms including Toyota Home by entering the “smart home” market. The global background includes thousands of smart-city projects, collectively worth at least USD 650 billion in 2014. At over USD 40 billion, Korea's Songdo smart city project is the costliest private-sector real-estate development ever undertaken.
1 Toyota Home is just one element of Toyota Corporation's smart city-related initiatives.
2 See Katherine Tweed, “Apple Launches Home Kit for the Connected Home,” Green Tech Media, June 2, 2014.
3 The figure is from the May 2014 MarketsandMarkets report “Smart Cities Market,” which estimates 14% annual growth in the sector but also hints at the potential for “exponential demand.” The report also identifies “IBM, Alcatel-Lucent, Accenture, ABB, Cisco, Cubic, Honeywell, Intel, Siemens and Oracle” as the “major players” in the current global smart-city market. See the report's press release here.
4 On Songdo, see Rick Huijbregts, “Songdo Case Study (v 1),” Presentation to Harvard Graduate School of Design, Executive Education,” January 29, 2014 and Rita Lobo “Could Songdo be the world's smartest city?” World Finance, January 21, 2014.
5 “The Smart City Market Will Be Worth a Cumulative Total of 3,100 trillion Yen for 2011-2030——Nikkei BP Cleantech Estimates Based on Its Research on 100 Smart Cities Worldwide,” Nikkei BP, Press Release, September 27, 2010.
6 The figures cited are available in the United Nations Environmental Programme's “Global Initiative for Resource Efficient Cities,”
7 See p 23 of the report itself as well as summary “Factsheet” at the website report's UNEP website.
8 The report's overview and relevant data can be found at OECD “Material resources, productivity and the environment”.
9 These are called “extractive wastes,” and in the US alone amount to 10 billion tons per year. See Edward Hill, “Material Wastes,” in Materials, Society and the Environment, May 2, 2014.
10 See the US Center For Naval Analysis Military Advisory Board “National Security and the Accelerating Risks of Climate Change,” CAN, May 2014.
11 On the cheapening of sensors, see Jesse Berst “A ‘perfect storm’ that's good news. (Falling prices on comms and sensing),” SmartGridNews.com, April 25, 2014.
12 An excerpt from Townsend's book is available here.
13 The “Smart Cities” study is authored by EY researchers Kijou Nanae and Rure Kamiko, and is available here.
14 Contrast the willingness of many municipal and cooperative utilities to grow new business models that foster the prosumer. See Paul Hockenos, “Local, Decentralized, Innovative: Why Germany's Municipal Utilities are Right for the Energiewende,” Energy Transition: The German Energiewende, September 28, 2013.
15 Among a welter of examples, in this (Japanese) research report for 2011, Waseda University Professor Nagata Katsuya makes the empirically absurd assertion that the “smart city” concept in the West centres on the smart grid because European and North American power grids are unreliable and inefficient compared to Japan's. In fact, Western Europe, Japan, and other major metropolitan centres globally share excellent grid reliability because their urban density makes it economical to deploy expensive underground cable. On this point, see pp. 1-2 of “Microgrids and distributed energy resource management software,” Saviva Research Review, April 2013.
16 The Agency's glossary for the 2011 Natural Energy White Paper (in Japanese) is available here.
17 The NEPC's material on the smart community is here.
18 On the characteristics of smart cities in the EU, see in particular chapter 2 of the “Mapping Smart Cities in the EU” study by Urenio, March 7, 2014.
19 See Tod Newcombe's fascinating and very readable account of how Santander, which has 180,000 residents and 12,5000 sensors, is using this unrivalled density of ICT to cut resource flows as well as engage its citizens, “Santander: The Smartest Smart City,” Governing, May 2014.
20 See Sally Davies, “Glasgow aims to be the first ‘smart city,’“ Financial Times, June 3, 2014.
21 On this spending increase, see (in Japanese) Okui Noriaki, “Details: The Big Picture on the 2014 ICT-Related Budget,” in Nikkei BP ITPro, June 2, 2014.
22 On this promised role of the cabinet in coordinating the ICT projects, see (in Japanese) p. 6 “This Time It's Different: Cabinet Leadership” in LDP Dietmember and ICT Strategy Special Commission Chief Hashimoto Gaku's June 14, 2013 presentation “The Abe Regime's ICT Strategy”.
23 The CIO's portal is here.
24 Sato Kosuke, (in Japanese) [Issues and Projects Toward Realizing the Smart City], Japan Research Institute, Paper, no. 2013-03, April 30, 2013.
25 Kumamoto City became Japan's 20th designated city on April 1 of 2013. The smart city project, which is a joint effort of Kumamoto City and Kumamoto Prefecture, is described (in Japanese) here.
26 On the survey and its results, see (in Japanese) p 6 of Kanto METI Natural Resources and Energy Division, “Towards the Establishment of a Kanto-Area Smart Community Collaborative Association (Tentative Name),” February, 2014.
27 The Sekisui House “smart community” promotional literature includes a convenient map of their projects.
28 The project's promotional website was opened on April 26, 2014.
29 Hitachi provides an English-language overview of several of the projects as “case studies” here.
30 Toshiba's Ibaraki City project appears to have been in planning since 2008, according to (in Japanese) “Redevelopment of North Region's Demolished Factory Area Accelerates, with Universities, Hospitals, Residences and Other Elements Planned Between Hitachi and Panasonic,” Construction News, March 18, 2014. Hitachi lists its domestic and global smart city projects (as of May 2013) at (in Japanese) “Toshiba Smart Communities”.
31 Mitsui Fudosan Group's smart city strategy began in 2012, and is detailed (in English) here.
32 On this, see “Sweden reinvents urban planning with citizen participation using 3D and Facebook,” Geospatial, June 25, 2012.
33 The report is part of the long list of documents produced by the “ICT Urban Development Promotion Committee” chaired by Oka. The Committee's website is here.
34 On Santander and other smart cities’ benefits from including citizens as much as possible, see “Citizen participation, at the heart of new Smart cities,” IDEAS4ALLBlog, April 28, 2014.
35 See “Agency9 brings 3D gaming effects to web-based GIS and planning,” AGENCY), August 15, 2013.
36 Indeed, Boston Consulting Group senior partner Dieter Hueskel also argues that the business model of conventional utilities has been destroyed by the spread of renewable power. See Anmar Frangoul, “Renewables: The end for nuclear power?” CNBC, May 30, 2014.
37 The present author conducted interviews in Kitakyushu on this point in February of 2012.
38 On this, see Andrew DeWit, “Just Gas? Smart Power and Koizumi's Anti-Nuclear Challenge,” The Asia-Pacific Journal, Volume 11, Issue 50, No.3, December 16, 2013.
39 Tsunashima Yuta, “Komatsu shows off progress in ‘energy independence’ at plants,” Nikkei Asian Review, May 31, 2014.
40 Keidanren is not averse to smart cities, but rather wants to have a little bit of them and a lot of the conventional economy, as can be seen in its (in Japanese) January 20, 2014 list of demands for tax cuts, TPP, ICT, compact and smart cities, and a host of other items. Like the Abe regime itself, the Keidanren has trouble getting a focus on essentials.
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