Japan’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT) has added two districts to the list of communities to receive funding for smart city projects in FY2025. The districts are Koto Ward, Tokyo, and Numazu City, Shizuoka Prefecture. The Koto Ward project will investigate advanced urban technologies. The Numazu City implementation will investigate urban mobility and transformation of city transformation in the light of population decline and ageing.

The moves are part of the Japanese Government’s push for smart cities to support regional revitalisation and societal sustainability.

The Government is pushing the concept of “Society 5.0”, a human-centred, technology-driven society, together with the vision of a “Digital Garden City Nation” to bridge an increasing divide between a few megacities such as Tokyo and Osaka, and the country’s smaller cities and countryside, which face shrinking and ageing populations.

The selection of a major Tokyo district, Koto Ward, and a regional city facing decline, Numazu City, illustrates MLIT’s dual-focus strategy to address the challenges created by the demographic shift on both megacities, with population growth outstripping infrastructure and capacity, and on smaller cities with shrinking workforces, revenues and ageing populations.

The Numazu City project will focus on urban mobility and city transformation in light of population decline and ageing. It will focus on urban mobility, which is likely to include Mobility as a Service (MaaS) and on-demand, AI-based transportation.

The Koto Ward project will investigate advanced urban technologies to address challenges of rapid population concentration and the strain on existing infrastructure in megacities.