Hi everyone! It’s ReF’s Marisa 😊
In today’s blog, I wanted to write about a Japanese city and its efforts in encouraging sustainability.
As I researched this topic, it was a pleasant surprise to find that a lot of cities across Japan have eco-friendly initiatives or are attempting to encourage more sustainability. Just as a little introduction to such cities, I’ll be covering the example of the city of Komae!
My initial interest in the topic of sustainable cities comes from the time I had the opportunity to go to Tokyo’s Ethical Expo back in May. The expo had booths from many brands, small businesses and even student organizations. However, most fascinating to me was the booth from Komae city. I thought it was rather unique that a city would have a booth at such an expo! I was able to talk to some of the city office’s staff and learn about what makes their city so unique.
Listening to what they had to say got me thinking about how other cities might be implementing sustainability into their governance.
It also made me feel more hopeful for future city development measures in Japan because I realized that if other places were to undertake methods like Komae, it could potentially dramatically reduce the negative impacts of urbanization while also encouraging residents to be more proactive in creating sustainable communities. 🫶🏻
(At the Ethical Expo, with fellow ReF member Kaede 🥰)
Now without further ado, let’s look at the city and its actions towards a greener Japan 🌱
Komae is a small city located in the Tokyo Metropolis, and perhaps lesser known to those other than locality. (My first time hearing about this city was actually when I saw their booth at the Expo!).
Talking to the city representatives at the booth, I learned about an impressive list of measures they had been implementing, such as running meticulous recycling programs or making it a priority to strive towards a 100% sustainable city when creating developmental plans or policies.
Particularly interesting to me was their use of a “3D city model” plan.
Aside from allowing urban planners to visualize the cityscape in three dimensions, the city emphasized the use of this model plan to focus on solar panel potential assessment. ☀️
As part of their aim to shift towards a completely sustainable city, increased use of renewable sources of energy, such as the use of solar panels, is an integral step.
Through this model plan, planners can analyze rooftops and open spaces across Komae to determine suitable locations for solar panel installations, thereby utilizing the most optimal placement of solar panels to maximize energy generation efficiency.
The 3D technology also allows city developers to have a comprehensive analysis of the potential impacts of their developments, including solar panel installations, on local biodiversity, urban heat island effect, etc, and enables them to construct in a way that is least harmful to the environment and alternatively optimizes sustainability.
(The Komae City booth at the Ethical Expo!🏙️)
The city has many other unique initiatives such as providing a “toy hospital” at the city recycling center with volunteers mending and aiding the re-use of old/damaged toys 🧸, and an app that helps users sort and recycle garbage according to the city’s rules.
Komae also makes active efforts to engage the community by encouraging participation in workshops and events such as tree-planting weekends or creating seminars for children as well as adults to learn and discuss the environment. 💭 They provide diverse opportunities to raise awareness amongst the community by encouraging daily walking groups that discuss environmental matters and hosting festivals like the ECOMatsuri, with games and quizzes and interactive activities to further interest and knowledge on both the city as well as Japan’s environmental initiatives.
(The poster for this year’s ECOMatsuri 🌏)
It has been very inspiring to see Komae’s holistic approach towards sustainability that focuses not only on bigger measures such as green architecture but also strives to create community involvement and pays attention to more niche categories such as personal household choices. For example, an ongoing city campaign is their collaboration with sustainable energy providers and offering incentives for residents to switch to renewable energy for their household electricity.
(Fun fact: switching to a more sustainable electricity provider can often be easier or cheaper than we tend to think 😍 it might be a good idea to research some and see if it’s possible to make the switch!)
I will wrap up this blog as it’s gotten quite long but I hope it was an enjoyable read and that by knowing that cities such as Komae are working towards sustainable surroundings, I hope we can gain some positive inspiration and continue to work towards making a greener world in our own unique ways!
That’s all for today and I look forward to seeing you with another blog soon!🌷
References
Komae City website https://www.city.komae.tokyo.jp
多摩結び #30 新都市発展途上にある狛江市を表す「狛江市章」 https://baaall.tokyo/play/tamamusubi-30/
狛江市環境マスコットキャラクター「えこまさん」https://www.yurugp.jp/jp/vote/detail.php?id=00002822
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