Woven City has been under construction since 2021 in Shizuoka Prefecture, near Mount Fuji, on the site of former factory buildings. Toyota announced this summer that construction is nearing completion. The smart city, like something out of a sci-fi movie, will become a “living laboratory” for testing the latest technologies.
Autonomous (self-driving) vehicles, renewable energy, zero harmful emissions, artificial intelligence systems and robots will be common here. The ambitious project by the automaker Toyota aims to explore how urban residents can coexist with these and other futuristic technologies.
The smart city was designed by Danish architect Bjarke Ingels, who also designed Google’s main California office and the new World Trade Center building in New York.
What else can Woven City boast about?
By 2025, developers will carry out what can be described as a soft launch of the Woven City, accompanied by various demonstration trials. Among them are experiments using next-generation remote communication technologies and smart logistics through smartphone applications linked to delivery robots.
In residents’ wooden houses, robotics and sensor-based artificial intelligence will be introduced, IFLScience reported. These innovations will handle everyday tasks, such as automatically restocking refrigerators and taking out the trash. AI will also monitor residents’ health.
Initially, the city, which will cover an area of about 70 hectares, will house 360 people — mostly elderly residents and families with children. The population is expected to gradually increase to at least 2,000 people. Among them will be company employees (primarily technicians and researchers) who will observe how AI systems and other technologies function in a real-world environment.
“Building a fully-fledged city from scratch, even on such a small scale as this, is a unique opportunity to develop the technologies of the future, including a digital operating system for infrastructure,” said Akio Toyoda, chairman of Toyota Motor Corporation.
Akio Toyoda is the great-grandson of Sakichi Toyoda, often called the “king of Japanese inventors,” who founded Toyota Industries in 1926 to produce automatic looms. Although the company has long since expanded beyond its original purpose, the name “Woven City” seems to echo those early industrial roots.
