Sustainable and Resilient Societies? Comparing Notions of the 'Smart City' in Germany and Japan

Abstract

We address the smart city as a specific innovation space in the direction of sustainable development, as well as an ambiguous concept that is interpreted differently in Japan and Germany. The smart city discourse often merges: enthusiasm for technology, social control, acceleration of innovation, surveillance, sustainable development, resilience, prosperity, and efficient resource consumption. These conflicting claims complicate efforts to pin down the smart city to one unifying paradigm. Our German-Japanese team of researchers visited two smart city sites in 2018 (Japan) and 2019 (Germany). For the analysis, we developed a new method of a scenario analysis adopting theoretical categories from De Waal & Dignum (2017). Our findings suggest that more efficient energy consumption and storage are prioritised in both cases. However, we also found several differences and varying priorities in Germany and Japan.