It’s been five years since Toyota announced plans to open an entirely new city in the shadow of Japan iconic Mount Fuji. The first phase of development of this “test course for mobility is now complete and the automaker is about to invite the first “weavers” and “inventors” to start moving in. Headlight.News has more.
The first phase of Woven City construction has been finished and the first residents soon will start moving in.
The first phase of construction has been completed and, in the months ahead, Toyota plans to begin helping several hundred “weavers” and “inventors” move into Woven City, a futuristic company town emerging on the site of its old Higashi-Fuji Plant in Susono City, Japan.
Barely an hour’s bullet train ride from Tokyo, Woven City is a project dreamed up by the automaker’s chairman – and grandson of its founder – Akio Toyoda. First unveiled five years ago and eventually expected to cost as much as $10 billion, it’s intended to serve as the model of the city of tomorrow.
“We think of Woven City as a test course for mobility,” said Toyoda, a statement from the automaker adding that it will be a place “where ‘Inventors’ who share a commitment to working ‘for someone other than themselves’ can develop, test, and validate innovative products and services.”
Forward into the past
Toyota Chairman Akio Toyoda says Woven City should generate a variety of payoffs.
The name, Woven City, carries several different meanings. For one thing, it harkens back to Toyota’s roots as a textile company, its founder Sakichi Toyoda creating a breakthrough loom that served as the foundation of the family’s fortunes.
In more modern terms, it’s designed to weave together a new type of community designed to overcome the many challenges that face modern metropolises. Much of Woven City’s infrastructure has been installed underground, making it easier to deliver services and handle waste, for one thing. More to the point for Toyota, The community has been planned around transportation, with self-driving pods allowing residents to move with ease while minimizing congestion.
Toyota – which now bills itself as a “mobility company” hopes to take the concepts it develops in Woven City and apply them to both its own business and to urban life, in general.
“It will change the way people live and move,” said Jon Absemeier, the chief technical officer for Woven by Toyota, the subsidiary that runs the planned community.
Phase 1
Initially, 100 Toyota employees and family are expected to move into Woven City. Eventually, the population will reach 2,000 or more.
Eventually, Woven City is expected to grow to 175 acres, or nearly a third of a square mile, with an expected 2,000 residents. Phase 1 comes in at a more modest 12.4 acres, with the first residents expected to begin moving in this spring. The second phase of construction is just getting underway. The entire project won’t be completed until late in the decade, officials said during a briefing at the Consumer Electronics Show. By then, they noted, the plan is to integrate restaurants and other entertainment venues, as well as the initial homes and offices.
But “the city will never be complete,” Danish architect Bjarke Ingels, who specializes in futuristic housing projects and helped Toyota develop Woven City, said at CES 2020 when the project was first announced.
Even in its early form, Woven City will serve as a “test course in the shape of a city,” said Hajime Kumabe, CEO of Woven by Toyota. While there will be a long-term focus on mobility, the broader goal is to look at how functional urban communities literally can be woven together, so some of the early “inventors,” or partner companies include the likes of beverage makers UCC Japan and DyDo Drinco, along with Nissin Food Products. Other partners include Nippon Telephone and Telegraph and Eneos, a major Japanese oil company.
The “weavers” in the project are the residents who will work for Toyota and its partners – along with their families. They’ll not only help develop new products and services but show how the community can come together to address urban challenges. The call for applicants has now gone out and the goal is to bring in 100 residents, most of them Toyota employees. The list of candidates will broaden to outsider by the time the first phase is fully operational, Woven City’s population by then expected to reach 360.
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Woven in history
Sakichi Toyoda invented a revolutionary loom that served as the foundation of what has become the Toyota empire.
Toyota’s choice of names for the new city is no accident. The company’s history is closely associated with the textile business, founder Takichi Toyoda inventing a breakthrough power loom that helped transform his family’s little home operation into a major business venture.
Its first factory was opened in Tokyo’s Taito Ward in 1892. Toyota Industries Corp. started selling looms to other manufacturers in 1926 – the company adopting a different spelling reflected by the subtleties of the Japanese kanji pictographs. It wasn’t until 1936 that it built its first automobile.
Akio Toyoda is Sakichi’s grandson. He recently stepped down as CEO of Toyota Motor Corp. but continues in the role of the automaker’s chairman.
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