Miyama City Smart Community Wins 2015 Good Design Gold Award

Miyama City website

Miyama City, Fukuoka Prefecture, announced on October 30, 2015, that its MIYAMA Smart Community project won the Gold Award (Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Award) at Good Design Award 2015 hosted by the Japan Institute of Design Promotion. The project was selected from among the Good Design Best 100, a hundred candidates for special design awards, as a design that has the potential to make life, industry, and society better.

Miyama City is the first city in Japan to make a commitment to developing the infrastructure for renewables-based energy self-sufficiency without relying on large power companies, and to balancing the need for local economic revitalization with environmental conservation.

The city has actively developed programs to promote citizen involvement in these efforts. It has redesigned and integrated two public infrastructural systems, electricity and IT, to improve the quality of elderly services and keep young people in the community. It also became the first municipality in Japan to establish its own electricity and service providing company.

Miyama City says it will use the award to carry out community revitalization more effectively with local citizens. Specifically, the city will strive to improve the living environment under a comprehensive strategy for revitalizing "town, people, and jobs" so that the citizens can live in Miyama comfortably and with a sense of ease.