The Woven City smart city will utilize autonomous vehicles, robots, hydrogen energy, and artificial intelligence solutions for its residents.
Less than four years after announcing plans to build a smart city near Mount Fuji in Japan, Toyota has shared that the city will soon welcome its first residents, as reported by Interesting Engineering on June 24. Named Woven City, this will serve as a “living laboratory” to test new technologies such as hydrogen energy, autonomous vehicles, robots, and artificial intelligence (AI). The total projected cost is $10.13 billion, and the city is nearing completion, according to Toyota. Residents are expected to move in by the end of this year, helping experts gather data on urban mobility patterns.
Woven City in a conceptual drawing. (Photo: Toyota).
Local residents will live in environmentally friendly smart homes made of wood, primarily powered by hydrogen and equipped with photovoltaic panels. “Building a complete city from the ground up, even on a small scale like this, is a unique opportunity to develop future technologies,” explained Toyota President Akio Toyoda.
According to the plan, Woven City will be divided into three zones: a pedestrian area, a road for autonomous vehicles, and a lane for optional transport modes like bicycles. To bring the project to fruition, Toyota is collaborating with the international architecture firm Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG). Woven City will cover an area of 708,000 square meters and is being constructed on the site of Toyota’s former Higashi-Fuji plant, which closed four years ago.
Toyota’s “Woven City” is designed for inventors and residents to share values and a passion for creating innovative solutions. Woven City will feature numerous streets, squares, offices, and residences, resembling a real city. The diverse support provided by Woven City will promote progressive technological development and services, helping to redefine future transportation.
The Higashi-Fuji plant of Toyota is located in the Tohoku region of northeastern Japan and was replaced after suffering significant damage from the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. In 2020, Toyota announced that the closed plant would be transformed into Woven City, with groundbreaking ceremonies held the following year.
