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Just south of Mount Fuji, on a modest 176-acre site once occupied by Toyotas Higashi-Fuji automotive factory, a groundbreaking urban experiment is underway. Launched in 2024, Phase 1 was completed last year and houses 360 residents, most of them Toyota employees and their families, as well as some researchers and retirees. It will ultimately be home to some 2,000 residents. The name “Woven City” symbolizes both the citys interwoven road networks and Toyotas historical roots in the textile industry, capturing the fusion of mobility, digital infrastructure, and human interaction. Woven City is neither a typical planned community nor a smart city in the usual sense of the term. It was deliberately launched to as an urban operating systema real world living laboratory ordesigned to learn and refine itself through real-world data and resident feedback. [Photo: Toyota] Kaizen in city form Woven City can be seen as an extension of Toyotas pioneering philosophy of continuous improvement or kaizen that sees workers as the source of true innovation. As the city comes to replace the industrial corporation as the fundamental platform for the knowledge age, Woven City empowers residents to actively shape and build their community. At its core is the premise that residents are not passive users of pre-designed systems but active co-creators of emerging ones. Woven City explicitly includes diverse demographic groups such as families, retirees, engineers, and researchers, ensuring feedback reflects a broad range of lived experiences, making the city more relevant and effective as an urban prototype. To support this co-creation, Toyota built extensive feedback mechanisms into Woven Citys designtraditional ones, like participatory design workshops, behavioral surveys, and resident advisory panels, and sophisticated digital technologies that track behaviors. Activities ranging from strolling through public plazas to residents usage of pop-up kiosks provide continuous data which is used to improve systems and services. As Toyota moves from Software Defined Vehicles to the broader strategic concept of comprehensive mobility, Woven City provides a prototype of a Software Defined City. Additionally, Woven City extensively employs Internet of Things (or IoT) devices and digital twin technology, enabling urban planners to proactively simulate urban scenarios and optimize systems such as energy, waste, water, and lighting before deploying them in the real world [Photo: Toyota] An autonomous vehicle testing ground Toyota has integrated diverse corporate partners into Woven City’s collaborative framework. Daikin, for example, tests adaptive air-quality solutions within residential units. UCC Japan operates mobile cafés to enhance community interaction. DyDo and Nissin pilot nutrition kiosks that monitor and respond dynamically to consumer preferences, gaining insights into how people interact with these systems in real-time settings. The citys buildings are primarily constructed from sustainable, carbon-neutral wood and topped with photovoltaic solar panels. Critical infrastructure, including electricity, water, and internet cables, is installed underground to enhance safety and aesthetic appeal. The citys infrastructure enables testing autonomous driving and other innovations that are difficult to try out in traditional urban settings. It integrates above ground and underground systems, These systems are continuously optimized based congestion. Pedestrian and cycling promenades are configured as linear parks, and flank lanes that are dedicated to low-speed autonomous shuttles. e-Palette shuttles provide accessible transportation, deliver goods, and offer mobile retail, supported by sensors and communication systems to manage traffic flows. Amenities like pop-up cafés and pocket parks are introduced when data indicates declining foot traffic, enhancing street-level vitality. [Photo: Toyota] A city beneath the city Underground, an extensive network of tunnels facilitates discreet and efficient delivery and waste management via autonomous vehicles and robots. This underground tunnel system connects the citys 14 buildings through approximately 25,000 square meters of subterranean tunnels. Autonomous delivery robots can do their work without having to deal with changing weather conditions, significantly enhancing efficiency and maintaining pedestrian-friendly streets. Interestingly, for the worlds leading automotive company, privately-owned gasoline-powered vehicles are prohibited, reflecting the citys sustainability commitment. Central to Woven Citys sustainable infrastructure is a decentralized hydrogen microgrid, supported by rooftop solar panels, stationary fuel cells, and replaceable hydrogen cartridges for vehicles and residences. This portable hydrogen cartridge system provides enough to power typical household appliances for several hours. These cartridges are relatively light and are designed to be portable and easily replaced, supporting decentralized and resilient power systems. When elderly residents had difficulty using this system, it was quickly redesigned to include assisted lifts and to work with voice-command technologies. Whn it was noticed that elderly residents had difficult using this system, kiosks were redesigned to use voice-command technologies to activate assisted lifts to make handling easier for them. A dense array of sensors monitors everything from pedestrian flows, energy consumption, and environmental conditions, and to usage patterns in public spaces. This data enables planners to test scenarios, adjust shuttle schedules, and reconfigure public spaces based on actual usage patterns and surveys, recalibrating street lighting, for example, to improve nighttime vibrancy. [Photo: Toyota] What can we learn from Woven City? Ultimately, Woven Citys transformative approach can be distilled into three fundamental principles: Start small, iterate fast: Validate ideas through limited real-world trials before scalingtreating the city not as a finished plan, but as a continuous experiment. Continuous real-time feedback: Urban technologies and systems that use resident input to quickly and continuously adapt how the city works. Empowered residents: Engage residents not as passive users, but as active co-creators whose lived experiences shape and refine urban systems in real time Taken together, these three principles reflect the core notion that cities are dynamic learning systems that must continually adapt based on residents’ behaviors and feedback. As a self-described urban prototype, Woven Citys approach offers useful insights for communities of all shapes and sizesfrom new cities from scratch to existing downtowns and suburbs. Toyota intends to extend successful innovations from Woven City to urban areas around the globe. [Photo: Toyota] Many new tech-driven citieslike Googles Sidewalk Labs, California Forever, and Saudi Arabias NEOMhave stumbled by aiming too big, overspending, following rigid plans, and overlooking community input. Woven City demonstrates a smarter path: start small, involve residents from day one, and stay flexible. By treating the city as an ongoing experiment, Woven City continuously evolves based on real-time feedback from its residents. This bottom-up approach drives genuine innovation and builds trust in ways top-down projects rarely achieve. Downtowns today face significant challenges, as the shift to remote work reduces commuting, increases office vacancies, and cuts transit ridership. Woven Citys real-time feedback methods can help businesses, planners, and policymakers reimagine a better future for downtowns. Real-time data can pinpoint which office buildings should transition into housing, mixed-use spaces, or entertainment venues. Monitoring technologies can also help guide transit improvementsoptimizing bus routes, subway lines, and redesigning streets to better support pedestrians and cyclists. This approach can accelerate the transformation of downtown areas from single-purpose business districts into vibrant, connected, and diverse neighborhoods. [Photo: Toyota] Suburbs, historically built as bedroom communities, are also experiencing profound changes. With the rise of remote work, more people seek to integrate their work and home lives. Woven City provides a useful template with its emphasis on mixed-use development, flexible infrastructure, and reduced reliance on cars. Its approach can help suburbs transform car-dominated infrastructure by incorporating linear parks, increasing green spaces, promoting walkability and cycling, and efficiently managing delivery vehicles. Its approach can also help suburbs learn how to more strategically array offices, coworking spaces, retail, and recreational facilities; and create more vibrant main streets and town centers. Woven Citys flexible building technologies could be a model for adapting traditional single-family homes into more versatile live-work environments. Woven City updates Jane Jacobs’ fundamental insights for our high tech age. Unlike so many other smart city efforts, it shows how new technologies can help cities evolve and learn from the day-to-day knowledge and activities of the people who inhabit and use them.
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E-Commerce
Everyday, Uber books more than 30 million rides around the world. Each of these trips tells the company something about its customers. Where theyre going, what theyre doing, and when they are there. Then there are the tens of millions of Uber Eats orders processed each day, which clocks what people are buying, how often, and when. Combined, you have an incredibly valuable collection of data for other brands to use in order to get our attention. Now, Uber is officially launching its own in-house Creative Studio to help brands to do exactly that. The new division of Uber Advertising will be working with brands to create not only adds on its digital platform, but custom IRL experiences like special ride offers, giveaways, and more. Ubers global head of sales Megan Ramm says that this is more about formalizing something brands have been asking for given how the companys platform is such a natural bridge between our online and offline lives. Uber is where we feel culture shows up in real life, says Ramm. When something big is happening in the world, we see it on Uber. If it’s an event or a product drop, a concert, or even coming home from the office, it’s all happening in real life. And we’re seeing that’s when and how brands want to connect with people that are using the platform. The rapid rise of retail media networks in recent years is well-documented. Everything from store shelves to ecommerce apps have become media opportunities for advertising. Dentsu research has reported that 75% of US consumers are influenced by brands advertised in-store, and eMarketer reported that U.S. Retail Media Ad spending was up by $4 billion in 2024. This new offering from Uber makes perfect sense. The company has already long utilized the captive audience on its apps as a vehicle for brands to get our attention, now its expanding that to actually working to craft a wider variety of ways for brands to do just that. Custom creative Tech platforms like Google and Facebook, as well as media companies like The New York Times and The Atlantic have long had in-house creative teams helping brand clients connect with users on their platforms. Previously, brands could (and still can) buy ad space on Uber platforms directly or programmatically, with their own creative. What the Creative Studio offers is an expanded, more bespoke option of what those ads can be, and how those brands show up on the Uber platform and in users’ real-life Uber experience. When you look at retail media, it’s really culture that converts, says Ramm. And that’s what’s happening online and offline. We’re launching this Creative Studio to help the premium brands we’re already working with, and others, to tap into that flow with experiences that feel organic to both the brands and Uber. The new Creative Studio worked with Diageo in late 2024 on a holiday campaign that gave Uber Eats users the chance to order a caroler or Christmas tree directly to their doorstep. In May, La Mer partnered with Uber Advertising during Formula Ones Miami Grand Prix. The Creative Studio worked with the skincare brand to give Uber Premier riders the chance to Go Home with La Mer in an ultra luxury vehicle, with surprise free gifts from La Mer inside the car. @livelikeria Late nights just got a glow-up. From May 24, @LA MER has teamed up with @Uber to bring beauty sleep straight to your backseat. Select an Uber Premier in Miami between 6PMmidnight and you might just end up in a La Mer luxury ride with deluxe samples waiting for you. #LaMerPartner original sound – Ria Michelle Ramm says that Uber Advertising has surpassed an annual revenue of $1.5 billion, growing 60% year over year. Our audience is sophisticated, they like to see things in real-time, and engage with things in real-life, she says. We’ve seen that in our Gen Uber research. So this is about connecting the experiential with the customization of what you’re getting on the platform.
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E-Commerce
Five public pools in Newark, New Jersey, just got an unusual upgrade. Painted in bright neon colors and sporting far-out shapes, five custom-designed cabanas have been installed on the decks of these public pools, one at each location. Created by second-year design-build students at the New Jersey Institute of Technology’s Hillier College of Architecture and Design, the cabanas offer seating, shading, and a generally unconventional poolside experience. The cabanas are the result of a 15-week college-wide design project involving roughly 170 students. Initiated through a long-standing relationship between Newark’s recreation department and NJIT senior lecturer Mark Bess, the project was aimed at filling a large void in the city’s public pool offerings. The pool areas didn’t have any types of amenity at all. It was essentially concrete platforms. There was nothing there, Bess says. This provided some useful function as well as giving the students an opportunity to stretch out a little bit. [Photo: Hillier College of Architecture and Design] A public private partnership was formed between NJIT, the city of Newark, and the logistics real estate company Prologis, which provided $16,500 in funding for the cabanas. Cities don’t often have the budget for state-of-the-art amenities like this, so this public-private partnership is a model for how municipalities can find creative solutions to improve public resources, says Donnell Redding, director of Newark’s Department of Recreation, Cultural Affairs and Senior Services. [Photo: Hillier College of Architecture and Design] Erin Pellegrino, an adjunct instructor at NJIT, worked with students on the designs, and held regular reviews with city officials and Prologis to review the ideas taking shape. Participating students initially came up with dozens of concepts that then got whittled down to 10 finalist ideas. Through 3D design and scale physical modeling, the students landed on five final designs that they then built themselves. The cabana designs range from familiar lounge chairs to more experimental shade structures. We actually try to avoid using the word cabana at the early stages, says Pellegrino. We try to tell students this is a pavilion. It needs to host sitting and laying and, you know, relaxing . . . perhaps even eating and communicating. So we try to give them verbs instead of nouns. [Photo: Hillier College of Architecture and Design] One of the cabanas is a row of chairs with rounded backs and an overhang that folds from behind like a crashing wave. Another is a geometrical puzzle of benches, tables, and walls that looks like its made out of Tetris blocks. Another resembles the metal fingers of an arcade’s claw machine, draped with fabric shade cloth. We give them a long leash, particularly early on, Pellegrino says. That usually results in some really interesting ideas. Then, when they have to build it, and they have to sit in it, that’s when they start to refine it and bring it back to reality. [Photo: Hillier College of Architecture and Design] Pellegrino and other NJIT instructors helped ensure the designs were feasible from a variety of perspectives, including the $16,500 budget provided by Prologis, the liability the school faced by putting these objects in public places, and even logistical issues like how much each cabana weighs and how it would be transported from the college to the pool. The cabanas were installed in late May. Pellegrino says an in-kind donation from a local paint store of about $3,000 worth of paint and other finishing materials should set the cabanas up to survive for at least five years, if more aren’t requested sooner. I would love to do it again. There’s certainly room for more of these things at most public pools and other kinds of public spaces, Pellegrino says. But that’s going to be dependent on money, like everything else.
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E-Commerce
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