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Just south of Mount Fuji, on a modest 176-acre site once occupied by Toyotas Higashi-Fuji automotive factory, a groundbreaking urban experiment is underway. Launched in 2024, Phase 1 was completed last year and houses 360 residents, most of them Toyota employees and their families, as well as some researchers and retirees. It will ultimately be home to some 2,000 residents. The name “Woven City” symbolizes both the citys interwoven road networks and Toyotas historical roots in the textile industry, capturing the fusion of mobility, digital infrastructure, and human interaction. Woven City is neither a typical planned community nor a smart city in the usual sense of the term. It was deliberately launched to as an urban operating systema real world living laboratory ordesigned to learn and refine itself through real-world data and resident feedback. [Photo: Toyota] Kaizen in city form Woven City can be seen as an extension of Toyotas pioneering philosophy of continuous improvement or kaizen that sees workers as the source of true innovation. As the city comes to replace the industrial corporation as the fundamental platform for the knowledge age, Woven City empowers residents to actively shape and build their community. At its core is the premise that residents are not passive users of pre-designed systems but active co-creators of emerging ones. Woven City explicitly includes diverse demographic groups such as families, retirees, engineers, and researchers, ensuring feedback reflects a broad range of lived experiences, making the city more relevant and effective as an urban prototype. To support this co-creation, Toyota built extensive feedback mechanisms into Woven Citys designtraditional ones, like participatory design workshops, behavioral surveys, and resident advisory panels, and sophisticated digital technologies that track behaviors. Activities ranging from strolling through public plazas to residents usage of pop-up kiosks provide continuous data which is used to improve systems and services. As Toyota moves from Software Defined Vehicles to the broader strategic concept of comprehensive mobility, Woven City provides a prototype of a Software Defined City. Additionally, Woven City extensively employs Internet of Things (or IoT) devices and digital twin technology, enabling urban planners to proactively simulate urban scenarios and optimize systems such as energy, waste, water, and lighting before deploying them in the real world [Photo: Toyota] An autonomous vehicle testing ground Toyota has integrated diverse corporate partners into Woven City’s collaborative framework. Daikin, for example, tests adaptive air-quality solutions within residential units. UCC Japan operates mobile cafés to enhance community interaction. DyDo and Nissin pilot nutrition kiosks that monitor and respond dynamically to consumer preferences, gaining insights into how people interact with these systems in real-time settings. The citys buildings are primarily constructed from sustainable, carbon-neutral wood and topped with photovoltaic solar panels. Critical infrastructure, including electricity, water, and internet cables, is installed underground to enhance safety and aesthetic appeal. The citys infrastructure enables testing autonomous driving and other innovations that are difficult to try out in traditional urban settings. It integrates above ground and underground systems, These systems are continuously optimized based congestion. Pedestrian and cycling promenades are configured as linear parks, and flank lanes that are dedicated to low-speed autonomous shuttles. e-Palette shuttles provide accessible transportation, deliver goods, and offer mobile retail, supported by sensors and communication systems to manage traffic flows. Amenities like pop-up cafés and pocket parks are introduced when data indicates declining foot traffic, enhancing street-level vitality. [Photo: Toyota] A city beneath the city Underground, an extensive network of tunnels facilitates discreet and efficient delivery and waste management via autonomous vehicles and robots. This underground tunnel system connects the citys 14 buildings through approximately 25,000 square meters of subterranean tunnels. Autonomous delivery robots can do their work without having to deal with changing weather conditions, significantly enhancing efficiency and maintaining pedestrian-friendly streets. Interestingly, for the worlds leading automotive company, privately-owned gasoline-powered vehicles are prohibited, reflecting the citys sustainability commitment. Central to Woven Citys sustainable infrastructure is a decentralized hydrogen microgrid, supported by rooftop solar panels, stationary fuel cells, and replaceable hydrogen cartridges for vehicles and residences. This portable hydrogen cartridge system provides enough to power typical household appliances for several hours. These cartridges are relatively light and are designed to be portable and easily replaced, supporting decentralized and resilient power systems. When elderly residents had difficulty using this system, it was quickly redesigned to include assisted lifts and to work with voice-command technologies. Whn it was noticed that elderly residents had difficult using this system, kiosks were redesigned to use voice-command technologies to activate assisted lifts to make handling easier for them. A dense array of sensors monitors everything from pedestrian flows, energy consumption, and environmental conditions, and to usage patterns in public spaces. This data enables planners to test scenarios, adjust shuttle schedules, and reconfigure public spaces based on actual usage patterns and surveys, recalibrating street lighting, for example, to improve nighttime vibrancy. [Photo: Toyota] What can we learn from Woven City? Ultimately, Woven Citys transformative approach can be distilled into three fundamental principles: Start small, iterate fast: Validate ideas through limited real-world trials before scalingtreating the city not as a finished plan, but as a continuous experiment. Continuous real-time feedback: Urban technologies and systems that use resident input to quickly and continuously adapt how the city works. Empowered residents: Engage residents not as passive users, but as active co-creators whose lived experiences shape and refine urban systems in real time Taken together, these three principles reflect the core notion that cities are dynamic learning systems that must continually adapt based on residents’ behaviors and feedback. As a self-described urban prototype, Woven Citys approach offers useful insights for communities of all shapes and sizesfrom new cities from scratch to existing downtowns and suburbs. Toyota intends to extend successful innovations from Woven City to urban areas around the globe. [Photo: Toyota] Many new tech-driven citieslike Googles Sidewalk Labs, California Forever, and Saudi Arabias NEOMhave stumbled by aiming too big, overspending, following rigid plans, and overlooking community input. Woven City demonstrates a smarter path: start small, involve residents from day one, and stay flexible. By treating the city as an ongoing experiment, Woven City continuously evolves based on real-time feedback from its residents. This bottom-up approach drives genuine innovation and builds trust in ways top-down projects rarely achieve. Downtowns today face significant challenges, as the shift to remote work reduces commuting, increases office vacancies, and cuts transit ridership. Woven Citys real-time feedback methods can help businesses, planners, and policymakers reimagine a better future for downtowns. Real-time data can pinpoint which office buildings should transition into housing, mixed-use spaces, or entertainment venues. Monitoring technologies can also help guide transit improvementsoptimizing bus routes, subway lines, and redesigning streets to better support pedestrians and cyclists. This approach can accelerate the transformation of downtown areas from single-purpose business districts into vibrant, connected, and diverse neighborhoods. [Photo: Toyota] Suburbs, historically built as bedroom communities, are also experiencing profound changes. With the rise of remote work, more people seek to integrate their work and home lives. Woven City provides a useful template with its emphasis on mixed-use development, flexible infrastructure, and reduced reliance on cars. Its approach can help suburbs transform car-dominated infrastructure by incorporating linear parks, increasing green spaces, promoting walkability and cycling, and efficiently managing delivery vehicles. Its approach can also help suburbs learn how to more strategically array offices, coworking spaces, retail, and recreational facilities; and create more vibrant main streets and town centers. Woven Citys flexible building technologies could be a model for adapting traditional single-family homes into more versatile live-work environments. Woven City updates Jane Jacobs’ fundamental insights for our high tech age. Unlike so many other smart city efforts, it shows how new technologies can help cities evolve and learn from the day-to-day knowledge and activities of the people who inhabit and use them.
Category:
E-Commerce
In the last 12 months, Target has publicly walked back its long-held DEI commitments, faced a weeks-long boycott from customers, and become one of several corporations that diminished its annual support for NYC Pride. But when June 1 rolled around, the company still trotted out its annual collection of Pride-inspired, rainbow-adorned merchand, for a number of reasons, its not landing well with queer customers. This years collection includes a series of apparel printed with slogans like Authentically Me and Glowing with Pride, rainbow-hued cat and dog doys, and, oddly enough, a couple of Pride-themed collectible bird figurines. Since the merch debuted, customers have been quick to notice an issue: Several of the items labels are printed with lorem ipsum filler copy. Targets pathetic 2025 Pride collection has arrived, one Reddit post on the subject reads. According to a spokesperson, Target is aware of the error, which it says originated with a vendor, and is working to address the issue. But for many customers, this labeling oversight feels like both a symptom and a symbol of larger issues at Target. For years, the company has turned Pride Month into a full-on branding extravaganza, releasing entire collections in stores and showing up as a sponsor at Pride parades across the country. In a series of events starting in 2023, though, Target has capitulated to rising conservative pressure, dialing back its Pride merch, ending its DEI commitments, and, this year, retreating from Pride parade sponsorship. Taken together, these factors make Targets 2025 Pride collection feel, at best, like a desperate bid to save face, and, at worst, like an attempt to cash in on a community that its too afraid to support outside of store walls. Targets retreat from Pride Target first launched pride products in 2015, and largely continued to expand its Pride-based inventory in the years following, openly doubling down on its support for the queer community during a bout of transphobic backlash in 2017. However, starting in 2023, the brands approach to Pride has been in flux. In May of 2023, CEO Brian Cornell told Fortunes Leadership Next podcast that the companys DEI efforts had fueled much of our growth over the last nine years. Mere weeks later, though, Target removed some items from its annual Pride collection after receiving an influx of conservative pushback, and even threats to its employees, over the items. The waters have been increasingly muddy for Targets Pride efforts ever since. In 2024, the company scaled back its Pride Month sections from all stores to only select locations and online. Then, this January, as companies across the country stepped back from DEI initiatives under the Trump administration, Target announced a series of its own concessions. The brand shared it was concluding certain goals and initiatives tied to racial equity in hiring, no longer participating in external surveys from the LGBTQ+ advocacy organization the Human Rights Campaign, and renaming its supplier diversity team to supplier engagement, shifting its focus away from explicitly courting brands with diverse ownership. To many loyal customers, this announcement felt like a betrayal, especially given that Target had previously been more vocal than its corporate peers on DEI initiativesand that the company has profited annually on Pride Month. This sparked a boycott of the brand that caused foot traffic to drop and share prices to plummet. In the aftermath, the Twin Cities pride parade announced that it would no longer accept Target as a sponsor. And, according to NYC Pride spokesperson Kevin Kilbride, Target was one of several brands that either backed out, reduced its contribution, or asked for its involvement to go unpublicized in the event. Targets retreat from Pride is part of a larger trend this year of corporations choosing not to renew their sponsorshipa pattern thats left many queer consumers wondering if corporate support was always just rainbow washing, or an attempt to signal affinity with LGBTQ+ customers merely to profit off of them. The [queer] community has been completely abandoned by a number of major companies, across a lot of brand categories, Joanna Schwartz, a professor at Georgia College & State University with a specialty in LGBTQ+ marketing, told Fast Company in May. The current prevailing wind is out of a far more conservative place, and companies are trying not to make anyone mad, but the companies that were really trying to make an easy buck off of the community were the first ones to leave. ‘Now they’re trying to keep getting our money, while denying our humanity’ Now that Pride Month has officially arrived, Target is left in a sticky situation. The company is attempting to walk a tightrope between avoiding a conservative outcry for its Pride merch while also striving not to alienate LGBTQ+ customers (who, according to a 2023 study by the investment adviser LGBT Capital, hold an estimated $3.9 trillion in global purchasing power). This year, Targets Pride collection looks fairly similar to last years and is, once again, only available in some locations. In a statement to Fast Company, a spokesperson shared, weare absolutely dedicated to fostering inclusivity for everyoneour team members, our guests, our supply partners, and the more than 2,000 communities were proud to serve. As we have for many years, we will continue to mark Pride Month by offering an assortment of celebratory products, hosting internal programming to support our incredible team, and sponsoring local events in neighborhoods across the country. Regardless of its intentions, Targets Pride merch is coming off decidedly hollow for queer customers this year, given its backtracking from the community at large. Whenever its time to profit off Pride, Target rolls out the rainbows, one X user wrote. But when it comes time to actually stand with the queer community? Crickets. Your Pride merch means nothing without a spine. On Reddit, users under a post regarding the unfinished lorem ipsum tags expressed discomfort with parts of the collection. One of the items is a moving truck figurine decked out in the lesbian flag and the phrase “Move N,” a reference to the concept of U-Hauling. Per Urban Dictionary, the slang term pokes fun at the stereotype of the speedy act of moving in together after a brief courtship between lesbians. One commenter called the figurine insulting AF. Others pointed out the lack of any reference to the trans or nonbinary communities. Still others were generally frustrated with the companys unreliable support. Gay folks never asked for Target to sell cheap low quality merch with rainbows splattered all over it, one user commented. All we asked for was to be treated fairly and allowed to live our lives. They made this shit to get our business. Now they’re trying to keep getting our money, while denying our humanity.
Category:
E-Commerce
Everyday, Uber books more than 30 million rides around the world. Each of these trips tells the company something about its customers. Where theyre going, what theyre doing, and when they are there. Then there are the tens of millions of Uber Eats orders processed each day, which clocks what people are buying, how often, and when. Combined, you have an incredibly valuable collection of data for other brands to use in order to get our attention. Now, Uber is officially launching its own in-house Creative Studio to help brands to do exactly that. The new division of Uber Advertising will be working with brands to create not only adds on its digital platform, but custom IRL experiences like special ride offers, giveaways, and more. Ubers global head of sales Megan Ramm says that this is more about formalizing something brands have been asking for given how the companys platform is such a natural bridge between our online and offline lives. Uber is where we feel culture shows up in real life, says Ramm. When something big is happening in the world, we see it on Uber. If it’s an event or a product drop, a concert, or even coming home from the office, it’s all happening in real life. And we’re seeing that’s when and how brands want to connect with people that are using the platform. The rapid rise of retail media networks in recent years is well-documented. Everything from store shelves to ecommerce apps have become media opportunities for advertising. Dentsu research has reported that 75% of US consumers are influenced by brands advertised in-store, and eMarketer reported that U.S. Retail Media Ad spending was up by $4 billion in 2024. This new offering from Uber makes perfect sense. The company has already long utilized the captive audience on its apps as a vehicle for brands to get our attention, now its expanding that to actually working to craft a wider variety of ways for brands to do just that. Custom creative Tech platforms like Google and Facebook, as well as media companies like The New York Times and The Atlantic have long had in-house creative teams helping brand clients connect with users on their platforms. Previously, brands could (and still can) buy ad space on Uber platforms directly or programmatically, with their own creative. What the Creative Studio offers is an expanded, more bespoke option of what those ads can be, and how those brands show up on the Uber platform and in users’ real-life Uber experience. When you look at retail media, it’s really culture that converts, says Ramm. And that’s what’s happening online and offline. We’re launching this Creative Studio to help the premium brands we’re already working with, and others, to tap into that flow with experiences that feel organic to both the brands and Uber. The new Creative Studio worked with Diageo in late 2024 on a holiday campaign that gave Uber Eats users the chance to order a caroler or Christmas tree directly to their doorstep. In May, La Mer partnered with Uber Advertising during Formula Ones Miami Grand Prix. The Creative Studio worked with the skincare brand to give Uber Premier riders the chance to Go Home with La Mer in an ultra luxury vehicle, with surprise free gifts from La Mer inside the car. @livelikeria Late nights just got a glow-up. From May 24, @LA MER has teamed up with @Uber to bring beauty sleep straight to your backseat. Select an Uber Premier in Miami between 6PMmidnight and you might just end up in a La Mer luxury ride with deluxe samples waiting for you. #LaMerPartner original sound – Ria Michelle Ramm says that Uber Advertising has surpassed an annual revenue of $1.5 billion, growing 60% year over year. Our audience is sophisticated, they like to see things in real-time, and engage with things in real-life, she says. We’ve seen that in our Gen Uber research. So this is about connecting the experiential with the customization of what you’re getting on the platform.
Category:
E-Commerce
Five public pools in Newark, New Jersey, just got an unusual upgrade. Painted in bright neon colors and sporting far-out shapes, five custom-designed cabanas have been installed on the decks of these public pools, one at each location. Created by second-year design-build students at the New Jersey Institute of Technology’s Hillier College of Architecture and Design, the cabanas offer seating, shading, and a generally unconventional poolside experience. The cabanas are the result of a 15-week college-wide design project involving roughly 170 students. Initiated through a long-standing relationship between Newark’s recreation department and NJIT senior lecturer Mark Bess, the project was aimed at filling a large void in the city’s public pool offerings. The pool areas didn’t have any types of amenity at all. It was essentially concrete platforms. There was nothing there, Bess says. This provided some useful function as well as giving the students an opportunity to stretch out a little bit. [Photo: Hillier College of Architecture and Design] A public private partnership was formed between NJIT, the city of Newark, and the logistics real estate company Prologis, which provided $16,500 in funding for the cabanas. Cities don’t often have the budget for state-of-the-art amenities like this, so this public-private partnership is a model for how municipalities can find creative solutions to improve public resources, says Donnell Redding, director of Newark’s Department of Recreation, Cultural Affairs and Senior Services. [Photo: Hillier College of Architecture and Design] Erin Pellegrino, an adjunct instructor at NJIT, worked with students on the designs, and held regular reviews with city officials and Prologis to review the ideas taking shape. Participating students initially came up with dozens of concepts that then got whittled down to 10 finalist ideas. Through 3D design and scale physical modeling, the students landed on five final designs that they then built themselves. The cabana designs range from familiar lounge chairs to more experimental shade structures. We actually try to avoid using the word cabana at the early stages, says Pellegrino. We try to tell students this is a pavilion. It needs to host sitting and laying and, you know, relaxing . . . perhaps even eating and communicating. So we try to give them verbs instead of nouns. [Photo: Hillier College of Architecture and Design] One of the cabanas is a row of chairs with rounded backs and an overhang that folds from behind like a crashing wave. Another is a geometrical puzzle of benches, tables, and walls that looks like its made out of Tetris blocks. Another resembles the metal fingers of an arcade’s claw machine, draped with fabric shade cloth. We give them a long leash, particularly early on, Pellegrino says. That usually results in some really interesting ideas. Then, when they have to build it, and they have to sit in it, that’s when they start to refine it and bring it back to reality. [Photo: Hillier College of Architecture and Design] Pellegrino and other NJIT instructors helped ensure the designs were feasible from a variety of perspectives, including the $16,500 budget provided by Prologis, the liability the school faced by putting these objects in public places, and even logistical issues like how much each cabana weighs and how it would be transported from the college to the pool. The cabanas were installed in late May. Pellegrino says an in-kind donation from a local paint store of about $3,000 worth of paint and other finishing materials should set the cabanas up to survive for at least five years, if more aren’t requested sooner. I would love to do it again. There’s certainly room for more of these things at most public pools and other kinds of public spaces, Pellegrino says. But that’s going to be dependent on money, like everything else.
Category:
E-Commerce
When outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases such as measles occur despite highly effective vaccines being available, its easy to conclude that parents who dont vaccinate their children are misguided, selfish, or have fallen prey to misinformation. As professors with expertise in vaccine policy and health economics, we argue that the decision not to vaccinate isnt simply about misinformation or hesitancy. In our view, it involves game theory, a mathematical framework that helps explain how reasonable people can make choices that collectively lead to outcomes that endanger them. Game theory reveals that vaccine hesitancy is not a moral failure, but simply the predictable outcome of a system in which individual and collective incentives arent properly aligned. Game theory meets vaccines Game theory examines how people make decisions when their outcomes depend on what others choose. In his research on the topic, Nobel Prize-winning mathematician John Nash, portrayed in the movie A Beautiful Mind, showed that in many situations, individually rational choices dont automatically create the best outcome for everyone. Vaccination decisions perfectly illustrate this principle. When a parent decides whether to vaccinate their child against measles, for instance, they weigh the small risk of vaccine side effects against the risks posed by the disease. But heres the crucial insight: The risk of disease depends on what other parents decide. If nearly everyone vaccinates, herd immunityessentially, vaccinating enough peoplewill stop the diseases spread. But once herd immunity is achieved, individual parents may decide that not vaccinating is the less risky option for their kid. In other words, because of a fundamental tension between individual choice and collective welfare, relying solely on individual choice may not achieve public health goals. This makes vaccine decisions fundamentally different from most other health decisions. When you decide whether to take medication for high blood pressure, your outcome depends only on your choice. But with vaccines, everyone is connected. This interconnectedness has played out dramatically in Texas, where the largest U.S. measles outbreak in a decade originated. As vaccination rates dropped in certain communities, the diseaseonce declared eliminated in the U.S.returned. One countys vaccination rate fell from 96% to 81% over just five years. Considering that about 95% of people in a community must be vaccinated to achieve herd immunity, the decline created perfect conditions for the current outbreak. This isnt coincidence; its game theory playing out in real time. When vaccination rates are high, not vaccinating seems rational for each individual family, but when enough families make this choice, collective protection collapses. The free-rider problem This dynamic creates what economists call a free-rider problem. When vaccination rates are high, an individual might benefit from herd immunity without accepting even the minimal vaccine risks. Game theory predicts something surprising: Even with a hypothetically perfect vaccinefaultless efficacy, zero side effectsvoluntary vaccination programs will never achieve 100% coverage. Once coverage is high enough, some rational individuals will always choose to be free riders, benefiting from the herd immunity provided by others. And when rates drop, as they have, dramatically, over the past five years, disease models predict exactly what were seeing: the return of outbreaks. Game theory reveals another pattern: For highly contagious diseases, vaccination rates tend to decline rapidly following safety concerns, while recovery occurs much more slowly. This, too, is a mathematical property of the system because decline and recovery have different incentive structures. When safety concerns arise, many parents get worried at the same time and stop vaccinating, causing vaccination rates to drop quickly. But recovery is slower because it requires both rebuilding trust and overcoming the free-rider problemeach parent waits for others to vaccinate first. Small changes in perception can cause large shifts in behavior. Media coverage, social networks, and health messaging all influence these perceptions, potentially moving communities toward or away from these critical thresholds. Mathematics also predicts how peoples decisions about vaccination can cluster. As parents observe others choices, local norms develop, so the more parents skip the vaccine in a community, the more others are likely to follow suit. Game theorists refer to the resulting pockets of low vaccine uptake as susceptibility clusters. These clusters allow diseases to persist even when overall vaccination rates appear adequate. A 95% statewide or national average could mean uniform vaccine coverage, which would prevent outbreaks. Alternatively, it could mean some areas with near-100% coverage and others with dangerously low rates that enable local outbreaks. Not a moral failure All this means that the dramatic fall in vaccination rates was predicted by game theory, and therefore more a reflection of system vulnerability than of a moral failure of individuals. Whats more, blaming parents for making selfish choices can also backfire by making them more defensive and less likely to reconsider their views. Much more helpful would be approaches that acknowledge the tensions between individual and collective interests and that work with, rather than against, the mental calculations informing how people make decisions in interconnected systems. Research shows that communities experiencing outbreaks respond differently to messagng that frames vaccination as a community problem versus messaging that implies moral failure. In a 2021 study of a community with falling vaccination rates, approaches that acknowledged parents genuine concerns while emphasizing the need for community protection made parents 24% more likely to consider vaccinating, while approaches that emphasized personal responsibility or implied selfishness actually decreased their willingness to consider it. This confirms what game theory predicts: When people feel their decision-making is under moral attack, they often become more entrenched in their positions rather than more open to change. Better communication strategies Understanding how people weigh vaccine risks and benefits points to better approaches to communication. For example, clearly conveying risks can help: The 1-in-500 death rate from measles far outweighs the extraordinarily rare serious vaccine side effects. That may sound obvious, but its often missing from public discussion. Also, different communities need different approaches: High-vaccination areas need help staying on track, while low-vaccination areas need trust rebuilt. Consistency matters tremendously. Research shows that when health experts give conflicting information or change their message, people become more suspicious and decide to hold off on vaccines. And dramatic scare tactics about disease can backfire by pushing people toward extreme positions. Making vaccination decisions visible within communitiesthrough community discussions and school-level reporting, where possiblecan help establish positive social norms. When parents understand that vaccination protects vulnerable community members, like infants too young for vaccines or people with medical conditions, it helps bridge the gap between individual and collective interests. Healthcare providers remain the most trusted source of vaccine information. When providers understand game theory dynamics, they can address parents concerns more effectively, recognizing that for most people, hesitancy comes from weighing risks rather than opposing vaccines outright. Y. Tony Yang is an endowed professor of health policy and associate dean at George Washington University. Avi Dor is a professor of health policy and management at George Washington University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Category:
E-Commerce
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