April 2020 to March 2021

Masayuki Azemi (Senior Fellow, Institute for International Socio-Economic Studies)

   The COVID-19 pandemic has directly affected various aspects of the lives of people around the world, particularly in urban areas where many people live, evoking many questions and arguments regarding the approach to urban development. Enabling people to live better lives entails designing cities in consideration of how to solve various problems—from the traditional population and financial issues to the recent focus on improving the quality of life (QoL). This is what construction of smart cities mean in the broad sense. In the area of mobility, which is one of the key elements in urban design of smart cities, automated driving is now one step to practical realization. The sophistication of mobility technologies and services, including MaaS (mobility as a service), is considered an important factor for overcoming challenges in mobility for both cities and sparsely populated regions.

　We, therefore, conducted research by focusing on government policies and programs as well as reports of international organizations and think tanks on the urban issues that must be considered in discussing smart cities. We also looked into approaches and directions on development and management of cities in the post-COVID-19 era. Next, in addition to the current state of policies and verification experiments on automated driving in various countries including Japan, we conducted literature review and research surrounding concrete business examples pertaining to its service aspect, namely, MaaS. In particular, we focused on approaches to the business ecosystem, which requires the participation of various stakeholders in order to improve people’s convenience and business feasibility.

　Through this research, we came up with the following conclusions and recommendations: (1) very high business demand can be expected due to the continued high necessity for solving problems and improving convenience in cities as shown by the unchanged superior position of cities despite the ongoing impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic; (2) while Japan has been ahead in establishing legislation on automated driving, China, Europe and the United States are developing technologies at a rapid pace and are actively carrying out verification experiments in conjunction with the construction of smart cities; (3) in regard to deployment of MaaS, there is a need to consider projects that will enable cooperation and deployment within the business ecosystem since there are still many areas that need to be improved, including figuring out how to enable participation of various stakeholders and how to enhance business feasibility.