A contributed article on the Community Drive Project, in which ZUKAI takes part, appeared in the February 2025 issue of "Kensetsu Management Gijutsu," a monthly published by the Economic Research Association.

Building local mobility together: the co-creation project "Community Drive Project" (PDF, in Japanese)

The article is under the name of SMART Fukushi Lab, with which we run the project. It ran as one piece in the issue's feature on sustainable town planning. The project team prepared the manuscript at the request of the editors.

What the article covers

  • What the project aims at: building a training program that develops "community drivers," the people who accelerate movement in a community, and tools for discussion
  • Why such people are needed: mobility issues such as giving up driving licenses, the burden of driving family members, welfare services that are hard to use and transporting supplies in a disaster cut across child-rearing, caregiving and disaster response
  • The tools: "Honne POST," which gathers residents' candid views, and the "Mobility Issue Map"
  • What was learned from the workshops in Kurobe, Toyama Prefecture

What ZUKAI is responsible for

The article introduces the project as one started in July 2024 by three organizations, each using its strengths: SMART Fukushi Lab, which promotes digital transformation in welfare; Nikken Sekkei Ltd., which does architectural and civil engineering design and urban design; and ZUKAI, which visualizes complex information as diagrams.

ZUKAI is responsible for the overall design of the project and its secretariat, for planning and facilitating the workshops, and for developing the Mobility Issue Map.

The Mobility Issue Map organizes the mobility issues gathered from local people and puts their causal relationships and vicious cycles on a single diagram. People in different positions use it to learn the background of one another's issues. At the Kurobe workshop, participants talked while walking on a map enlarged to 4 m by 6 m. It uses the thinking behind the Issue Map.

Details

  • Outlet: "Kensetsu Management Gijutsu," February 2025 issue (Economic Research Association)
  • Feature: sustainable town planning
  • Title: Building local mobility together: the co-creation project "Community Drive Project" (in Japanese)
  • Under the name of: SMART Fukushi Lab