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424 Sustainable Cities and Communities Design Handbook

FIGURE 21.1 Japanese smart communities.

efficiency, while encouraging densification. Their aim is to increase disaster
resilience, economic revitalization, energy security, socioeconomic equity, and
related public goods (Kashiwagi, 2016). Also, they stress that the network
integration of these discrete smart community districts is the basis for building
the overall smart city (Murakami, 2017).
Yet there is no authoritative count of Japanese smart communities. Tallying
cases requires extensive searches through national and subnational government
materials as well as among the major home builders (e.g., Sekisui House,
Panahome, Misawa Home) and other sources. Recent quantitative and
comparative research, including the ABI Research announcement cited earlier,
suggests that Japan’s initiatives are plentiful and robust. Additional evidence is
available from the Smart Energy Group of the Japan Economic Center (JEC), a
market research firm established in 1966, which regularly surveys the Japanese
and international markets. The JEC’s 2016 surveys indicated that Japan is a
global leader in deploying the smart energy management systems that are
central to the smart community. Table 21.1 displays the JEC survey results and
projections for HEMS sales. The table reveals that 75,000 units were installed
globally in 2011, and that a total of 15,000 (20% of the global total) were in
Japan. By 2015, the number of HEMS had increased to 870,000 globally, with
150,000 (17.2% of the global total) in Japan. For 2020, the JEC projected a
worldwide diffusion of 1.632 million HEMS, with 240,000 (14.7% of the
global total) in Japan. The results for Japan are roughly consistent with an