Over five sessions since November, students have deepened their understanding of domestic and international smart city trends, put them into practice in workshops, and pursued the kind of smart city Yokohama should aim to become. The results of their work were presented on January 11th.
This time, I will report on what happened at that time.
The students were divided into three groups for their presentations.
Presentations included topics such as "How to communicate the concept of smart cities," "Smartening up elderly networks and color-matching services to enable people to live vibrantly in areas with high aging rates," and "Building a system that combines a local government's town app, local currency app, and IC functions (mobility) into a single app to enable residents to easily participate in their community."
In addition to Professor Emeritus Sadowara of Yokohama National University, speakers at this presentation of the results included Mr. Kosugiyama of Sotetsu Urban Creates, who has cooperated in previous Smart City workshops, Mr. Chihara of NTT East Japan, and Mr. Hanzawa of the Yokohama City Urban Development Bureau, who represented the government.
After each speaker spoke about their involvement in smart cities from their own perspective, a discussion was held based on the students' presentations.
During the discussion, there was a lively exchange of opinions on the content of the students' presentations and questions about smart cities that the students had raised (is attachment to local communities necessary in today's world? Do residents want to develop the characteristics of their local communities? etc.).
Opinions were also expressed by the participants who came to see the results presentation.
When we hear the term "smart city," we inevitably think of the use of cutting-edge technology, but after five workshops, the students began to view "smart city" from the perspective of how to make a city better by placing the residents at the center.
This presentation was a valuable opportunity to see the growth of these students and to think about what "a smart city" means for Yokohama.