Kobe: Enhancing Livelihoods Through Design

Kobe is the capital of Hyogo Prefecture, Japan, and one of the most beautiful and exotic port cities in Japan. After the Great Hanshin Earthquake in 1995, Kobe issued the “Outline of the Kobe City Reconstruction Plan”, which put forward the strategic concept of “realizing the reconstruction of the disaster area in a creative way”, and actively developed the tertiary industry with the fashion design industry as the leader. In October 2008, Kobe was designated as a “City of Design” by UNESCO.

The basic concept of Kobe’s “City of Design” is to create a city that is livable, visitable, and sustainable – not only for cultural and educational professionals and businesses, but more importantly, for all citizens to participate in and engage with, making it a vibrant, creative, and innovative city. The development focuses on three main aspects: livable city design, quality life design, and craftsmanship design.

Designing a Livable City: Detailing Each Functional Zone

The goal of a livable city includes urban space design with local personalized charm characteristics, prosperous and pleasant urban atmosphere, and comfortable urban environment design, which is suitable for citizens to rest and aspect. Among them, the residential area mainly highlights the beautiful landscape, comfort and pleasure, the urban green area mainly emphasizes the green world with lush and loose, and the urban water planning focuses on liveliness and prosperity and leisure.

Designing Livable Lifestyles: Expanding the Creative Class and Encouraging Public Participation

The goal of livable living is not only to encounter elegant design and cultivate creativity, but more importantly, to promote residents’ respect for diverse lifestyles and live a happy life. Kobe has established an original fashion information release mechanism to provide a variety of clothing, food, housing, transportation, and travel and fashion consultations, promote the growth and gathering of artists and designers, and hold festivals such as the “Kobe Design Festival” and “Kobe Fashion Trend Festival” with unique charm, so that citizens can fully participate in the design of livable life.

Craftsmanship Design: Supporting Innovation in Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises

Formulate different measures for the revitalization of small and medium-sized enterprises according to the characteristics of different industries, and build industry-academia-government platforms, such as Kobe’s unique pastry and non-leather shoes and other production process creative design interactive platforms, and exchange platforms between creative design and distributors, highlighting the role of design in economic development. At the same time, it is worth mentioning that Kobe attaches great importance to cultivating creative designers, establishing a creative center and organizing “Kobe Design Day” as a carrier to widely absorb domestic and foreign creative designers, and relying on this team of designers, on the one hand, to preserve the historical buildings of Japan’s opening period to continue the urban context, and on the other hand, to combine them with modern community landscape planning to give Kobe characteristics. Kobe can present the unique charm of the city by moving from any place in different geographical scales and spaces.

Source: Chongqing New Design Internal Issue 13
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