Toyota is building the smart city of the future

Robots that help around the house. Autonomous electric cars that meander through the city. Sensor technology that automatically measures our state of health. At the foot of Mount Fuji in Japan, Toyota is building the smart city of the future. On the site of a former Toyota factory, the car company is building its so-called "Woven City" on an area the size of around 250 soccer fields. 2000 people and a number of new technologies should find a home and network there. The auto giant wants to test new technologies in real operation in the smart city. One of the pioneers of this idea is the American IT giant IBM. "This is not just about improving the world, but of course there is a very clear economic interest behind it. What is completely legitimate to look at how improvements can be made with digital offers, with broadband solutions, with data availability and data analysis," says Stadtentwicklungs- Expert Michael Lobeck in the ntv podcast "Wieder was learned". Smart cities are digital applications in urban development. Michael Lobeck is a freelance consultant and moderator in urban development. In this context, he has been working on the development of smart cities for a good 15 years. In 2006 he was part of one of the first projects in Germany. At that time, Telekom announced the T-City city competition. Lobeck accompanied the project at the time as an employee of the University of Bonn. "That was one of the first projects in Germany where this term was used widely." Friedrichshafen on Lake Constance won the competition. Telekom then invested in expanding the city's network infrastructure. In addition, the power grid was linked to the broadband network. Selected households were selected as so-called "futurists" and were given new technology at that time free of charge. An online learning platform was put into operation at three schools, daycare places were allocated via a web portal and a ridesharing system was established. Lobeck looks back on "really trying to develop new solutions" for urban development using digital possibilities.