Hamamatsu City

Hamamatsu Voluntary Local Review Report
“Hamamatsu, a creative city built on civil collaboration, shining into the future”

Insights of the Report

To tackle with a lot of local challenges, Hamamatsu City is managing city administration in partnership with various local stakeholders and by leveraging municipal budgets and local resources effectively. The Hamamatsu City Comprehensive Plan, the 30-year plan from 2015 is integrated with the principles of the SDGs, and therefore the city is promoting the SDGs implementation through the implementation of the comprehensive plan. The comprehensive plan of the city was drawn up using backcasting techniques. The comprehensive plan includes 12 vision-points for the desirable future of city called the “One Dozen Futures” and sets out comprehensive policies to achieve the vision. In the process of making the comprehensive plan, "the Hamamatsu Future Design Council" composed of experts and citizens having different backgrounds was established to review and discuss the plan. In addition to the discussion at the Council, the city interviewed citizens to hear and reflect more voices from citizens. In the comprehensive plan, the First Promotion Plan for the Vision of Hamamatsu (Basic Plan) was formulated with a planning period of 10 years from 2015 to 2024. Under the First Promotion Plan, indicators and targets have been set in seven sectoral areas: industry and economy; childrearing and education; safety, security and comfort; environment and energy; health and welfare; culture and lifelong learning; and local government and urban management. These indicators and targets are closely related to the objectives of the SDGs and Hamamatsu City promote the SDGs through implementation of the First Promotion Plan. In addition, when the “Hamamatsu City Strategic Plan”, an annual implementation plan under the comprehensive plan and “policy and project sheets” that describe more detail project plan are formulated, line departments are requested to indicate relevant goals and targets of the SDGs in addition to information on budget and department and sections in charge. Hamamatsu City was selected as a SDGs Future City in 2018 by the Japanese government and also as one of the activity groups to build a local platform for realising the concept of a Regional Circular and Ecological Sphere (R-CES) that included in the government’s Fifth Basic Environment Plan. Hamamatsu’s actions are linking with the Japanese government policies to promote the SDGs and sustainable city development as such. The SDGs Future City Plan, an action plan of Hamamatsu City as a SDGs Future City set three pillars of actions related to the economy, society and environment as explained below. The city will implement the plan by linking these three dimensions of sustainable development (economy, society and environment) effectively and also by involving various stakeholders.

Issued: September 2019

City Profile

Hamamatsu City is a government ordinancedesignated city, located between Tokyo and Osaka along the Pacific coast, with an area of 1,558㎢ and a population of about 800,000. The population of the city is on a downward trend from its peak in 2008. It is projected that the population trend will continue and the aging ratio (27% as of 2018) will increase. One of the features with regard to population in Hamamatsu is the number of foreign nationals, which accounts for 3% of the total population, 1% higher than the national average. As a result of the merger of 12 local municipalities in July 2005, Hamamatsu became the second largest municipal area nationwide with a diverse natural and social environment that includes urban, rural, mountainous and hilly areas. For this reason, it is referred to as a government ordinance-designated city that is a model of Japan in miniature. With rich forest and fishery resources, primary industry is thriving in Hamamatsu. In addition, the city is famous for manufacturing, and is the location of large corporations that are active on the global stage, such as Suzuki, Yamaha, Kawai, Hamamatsu Photonics, Roland, and FCC. Not only large companies but also small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and venture companies are also active. The higher ratio of primary and secondary industries compared to other government-ordinance designated cities in Japan is one of the characteristics of Hamamatsu.

The Report and more

The VLR report is available here:
Hamamatsu Voluntary Local Review Report