Page 478 - Sustainable Cities and Communities Design Handbook

448 Sustainable Cities and Communities Design Handbook

Similar to Higashi Matsushima, Hirosaki city’s smart city plan thus in-
cludes the institution of a local power firm, as one means to cut this outward
flow of money and keep it in the community. The central government agencies
are in support of this ambition, just as they are in all the other smart com-
munity initiatives. The fiscal and other support for local-community-led power
and thermal initiatives is crucial to the long-term collaborative planning that
has evolved in post-3-11 Japan.
Fig. 21.11 shows Hirosaki city’s spatial planning, or the “Locational
Optimization Plan.” This plan is explicitly part of the city’s smart city plan.
As in virtually all Japanese smart community projects, policy integration
between energy and spatial planning has led to robust policies to foster
densification, to deal with depopulation and aging in the context of acceler-
ating climate change and other hazards. These plans are already guiding the
relocation of hospitals, schools, elderly care, and other public services, a
relocation that in turn increases the costebenefit performance of smart energy
networks and inputs at the same time as it reduces energy use. That reduction

FIGURE 21.11 Hirosaki city locational optimization plan.