'Kitakyushu Model' for Green City Development Published in Three Languages

Keywords:　Local government　Policy / Systems　

The Kitakyushu Asian Center for Low Carbon Society, established and operated by Kitakyushu City in Fukuoka Prefecture in partnership with stakeholder organizations in the city, announced on September 3, 2013, that it has developed the "Kitakyushu Model" for green city development by systematically organizing development know-how based on its own experience. This is the first methodology ever developed in Japan as a development model for helping Asian cities reduce carbon dioxide emissions and grow sustainably.

The Kyushu Model includes urban development expertise, case studies, and a tool kit. The urban development expertise component encompasses four environmental fields: waste management, energy management, water management, and pollution management. The case studies showcase examples such as Kitakyushu Eco-Town, which has a high concentration of recycling plants, and the tool kit contains a checklist that can be useful for master plan development. The model was published in three languages (Japanese, English and Chinese) and is available on the Internet.

Kitakyushu sees the promotion of urban infrastructure businesses that contribute to sustainable development in Asia as a core initiative in its new growth strategy. As part of such efforts, the city plans to promote the export of integrated urban environmental infrastructure systems through its participation, from the master planning phase, in the development of such cities as Surabaya in Indonesia (Kitakyushu's Green Sister City) and Haiphong in Vietnam (with which Kitakyushu has concluded an exchange agreement) using the Kitakyushu Model.