Toyota opens doors to $10 billion ‘City of the Future’ – and they’re recruiting residents

The future has officially arrived and Toyota invites you to be a part of it.

The automaker has unveiled its much-anticipated $10 billion “Woven City,” a futuristic, eco-friendly community in Shizuoka, Japan, where innovation will take center stage — and they’re looking for participants to help test it out of tomorrow’s technology.

The ambitious project, first announced five years ago, was unveiled as complete during a presentation at CES 2025 by Toyota chairman Akio Toyoda on Monday, What’s The Jam reported.

The city, which spans 12 hectares, is being billed as a “living laboratory”, where residents will double as guinea pigs for innovative technologies in mobility, urban living and sustainability.

“Woven City is more than a place to live, work and play,” said Toyoda during the launch. “[It’s] a place where people can invent and develop all kinds of new products and ideas.â€

The first phase of the project will begin this fall, with about 100 initial residents — mostly Toyota employees and their families — moving in.

Over time, the population will expand to include outside inventors and entrepreneurs, with up to 2,000 people expected to live there as the project progresses.

Built with “human-centered” designs to improve quality of life, the city will test everything from autonomous vehicles to renewable energy solutions, with key partners such as Daikin, NISSIN and UCC Japan contributing to the effort .

Residents will live in a high-tech environment where transportation, energy use and daily life are integrated into a seamless ecosystem designed for experimentation.

“It’s a living laboratory where residents are willing participants, giving inventors the opportunity to freely test their ideas in a safe, real-life environment,” Toyoda said at CES.

Toyota’s goals for Woven City extend far beyond tech gadgets — the company envisions the community as a hub for collaboration and problem-solving.

Startups, outsourcing businesses and individual entrepreneurs will work alongside Toyota’s own experts, leveraging the automaker’s decades of manufacturing knowledge and Woven by Toyota software expertise to create solutions to some of the biggest challenges of society.

“Woven City is a test course for mobility where inventors who share a commitment to work for others can develop, test and validate innovative products and services,” Toyota said in a statement.

The futuristic community isn’t just about testing technology—it’s about completely reimagining urban living.

Toyota believes the project has the potential to bring about significant changes in the way people live, move and interact with their environment, all while gathering feedback from residents who will play a central role in what they see as “shaping of the future”.