Panasonic Plans to Build a 'Sustainable Smart Town' in Japan by 2014
Fujisawa Sustainable Smart Town Panasonic via CEProUnprecedented private-sector development Japan may still be recovering from earthquake-related woes, but that's not stopping Panasonic and eight partner companies from pushing ahead with their own rebuilding effort that could reshape the way future cities and towns are built. Part demonstration initiative and part reclamation project, Panasonic and friends are turning the footprint of one of the company's former factory sites into a 47-acre, 1,000-home "smart town" with energy- and eco-conscious considerations leading the development. But the idea here isn't to create a town stripped to the bare minimum energy usage. Rather, by building the "Fujisawa Sustainable Smart Town"--Fujisawa City in Kanagawa Prefecture being the larger urban area here--with next-gen power-generating and power-saving infrastructure from the ground up, the companies plan to show just how green a town can be when various technologies are stacked together and work in unison. As such, Fujisawa SST won't...