Last January, at CES 2020, Toyota announced plans to build its own city. It would be called Toyota Woven City, it would be situated at the foot of Mount Fiji in Japan, and it would start construction in 2021.
These days, we’ve come so accustomed with delays and pushed-back deadlines that the surprise is in hearing one company is actually able to stick to the timeline announced before the international health crisis. Toyota is one such example and, this week, it officially broke ground for Woven City.
An official groundbreaking ceremony took place at the Higashi-Fuji site in Susono City, Shizuoka Prefecture, and it saw the who’s who of the project come out, including Toyota President Akio Toyoda. Big words were said, as the occasion demands, but the takeaway here is that Toyota is fully committed to building this city of the future.
Woven will live up to the name. It’s designed as a testbed, a live-in laboratory for current and future Toyota technology, with a focus on the human element and an optimized quality of life. The number of initial residents will be small, of just 360, mostly senior citizens or families, and will expand to 2,000 in the final stages, including Toyota employees.
The idea is to use Woven to try out all the stuff Toyota is working on, from AI to AVs, to create a new form of urban environment and a new type of community. One highlight is the idea of segregating traffic by areas: one for electric autonomous personal vehicles, one for pedestrians, one for people with personal mobility vehicles, and an underground area for cargo hauling. We discussed this in more detail in a coverstory on Woven City, after the CES presentation.
“The Woven City project officially starts today,” President Toyoda says in a statement. “Taking action as one has decided is never an easy task. I must express my deepest gratitude to all who have provided their whole-hearted support and cooperation to the project through today. The unwavering themes of the Woven City are ‘human-centered,’ ‘a living laboratory’ and ‘ever-evolving.” Together with the support of our project partners, we will take on the challenge of creating a future where people of diverse backgrounds are able to live happily.”
The phrase “the future starts now” feels like a good fit here.
An official groundbreaking ceremony took place at the Higashi-Fuji site in Susono City, Shizuoka Prefecture, and it saw the who’s who of the project come out, including Toyota President Akio Toyoda. Big words were said, as the occasion demands, but the takeaway here is that Toyota is fully committed to building this city of the future.
Woven will live up to the name. It’s designed as a testbed, a live-in laboratory for current and future Toyota technology, with a focus on the human element and an optimized quality of life. The number of initial residents will be small, of just 360, mostly senior citizens or families, and will expand to 2,000 in the final stages, including Toyota employees.
The idea is to use Woven to try out all the stuff Toyota is working on, from AI to AVs, to create a new form of urban environment and a new type of community. One highlight is the idea of segregating traffic by areas: one for electric autonomous personal vehicles, one for pedestrians, one for people with personal mobility vehicles, and an underground area for cargo hauling. We discussed this in more detail in a coverstory on Woven City, after the CES presentation.
“The Woven City project officially starts today,” President Toyoda says in a statement. “Taking action as one has decided is never an easy task. I must express my deepest gratitude to all who have provided their whole-hearted support and cooperation to the project through today. The unwavering themes of the Woven City are ‘human-centered,’ ‘a living laboratory’ and ‘ever-evolving.” Together with the support of our project partners, we will take on the challenge of creating a future where people of diverse backgrounds are able to live happily.”
The phrase “the future starts now” feels like a good fit here.