Innovation: Future City Initiative

Japan

AAI Domains:

• Independent, healthy and secure living (access to health services, independent living)

• Participation in society (lifelong learning, educational attainment)

• Employment

Environmental sustainability and ageing are two global challenges that need to be addressed in a comprehensive and linked fashion if we are to live in communities and societies that are sustainable and meet the needs of all people. These twin challenges need to be addressed in cities around the world as the majority of the world’s population now live and will age in densely populated urban environments. There are global initiatives such as the World Health Organisation’s Age-Friendly cities initiative that seek to address the challenges of ageing but there is still scope for national and local strategies that address both of these grand challenges.

The Japanese Government’s Cabinet Office launched the Future City Initiative in 2011, and 11 cities were selected as test sites for the development and testing of innovative solutions to the challenges of environmental sustainability and a super-ageing society. This followed on from the Eco-Model Initiative that selected 13 cities across Japan to develop more environmentally sustainable approaches to urban living.

The Future City Initiative aims to achieve a revitalisation of economies and societies based on people-friendly values that cover a range of domains. The areas covered in each test site include education, health care services, energy, ICT, mobility, transport and the built environment that must be more environmentally sustainable and age-friendly.

The cities have been given additional financial resources and the ability to deregulate activities in order to achieve progress as quickly as possible. The city initiatives are partnerships of the local municipality with corporations and universities along with representation from citizen groups and there is a strong commitment to sharing successful innovations through an open source strategy between the pilot cities in Japan and internationally.

There is a database of nearly 200 case studies of innovations in sustainable and age-friendly urban living from cities in Japan and around the world to showcase progress. They are all driven by the basic aim of creating cities where everybody wants to live and everyone has an improved quality of life. For example, Toyama is a city with a population of over 400,000 people and has focused on developing a compact city based on age-friendly and environmentally sustainable public transport and free admission to public facilities for older people when visiting with their grandchildren to encourage inter-generational activity.

There is also a city wide emphasis on the promotion of wellness for all ages along with independent living centres for older people to enable them to prevent illness and maintain their health and well-being. Each city is adopting local solutions to meet global challenges so there are an abundance of socially innovative projects taking place within this general framework.

In relation to active ageing, the Future City Initiative covers many indicators including increasing employment among older people, independent health and secure living that includes higher levels of physical activity with improved access to health services and lifelong learning. As a future focused programme, there is an emphasis on increasing the capacity to actively age over time in the next thirty years. The commitment to learning from projects within the Initiative and the wider world through the database of case studies represents the spirit of social innovation to develop, test and learn.

Websites

Japan for Sustainability

Japan for Sustainability news article