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innovation policy. The 4th Plan positioning S&T as an engine for value creation
targets two major innovation fields strategically: Green Innovation and Life
Innovation. The former is to realize low carbon society with sustainability and the
latter is to realize the high quality of life in an aging society.
Under the influence of the 3.11 Earthquake, especially, the 4th Plan puts stress
on Green Innovation to develop renewable energy, low carbon of energy supply
and demand, saving energy, and green infrastructure because it is a critical issue to
deal with the limits of nuclear energy and the crisis of global warming simulta-
neously. Green Innovation aims to stimulate technology innovation for environ-
ment and energy, diversify energy supply sources, reform social system for the
innovation of energy use, build long-term stable energy demand structure, and
realize the leading edge low carbon society in the world. The important issues for
Green Innovation in the 4th Plan are as follows:
• To realize stable energy supply and low carbonization.
• To achieve high efficient and smart use of energy.
• To greenize social infrastructure.
To stimulate Green Innovation, it is needed to construct a new system that
promotes issue-driven innovation including the consideration and reform of reg-
ulation and institution. In particular, the 4th Plan puts emphasis on construction of
a new social system such as ''smart community'' by academia-local government-
industry collaboration based on local characters (MEXT
2011
).
3 Building STP's Ecosystem: The Kitakyushu Approach
3.1 Backgrounds: Industrial Decline and City Renaissance
Plan
Kitakyushu City is a core of the Kitakyushu Industrial Area that was one of the
four major industrial areas in Japan. The area of city at present was gained through
the merger of five old cities which had functional identity severally: Wakamatsu
(port for coal distribution), Moji (trading port), Yahata (ironworks), Tobata
(coastal industrial area), and Kokura (military base and arsenal). These five cities
had constituted the consecutive and the industrial development mechanism which
embedded in the regional structure like demand creation (Kokura)—resource
procurement (Wakamatsu)—production (Yahata and Tobata)—marketing (Moji),
and it was considered as a unified industrial area. In other words, it can be said that
the space structure of Kitakyushu City was a form which the mechanism of
industrial development that brought the improvement of productivity of steel
industry appeared as a space structure of the city (Fig.
10
).
However, the industrial development mechanism of this area, as a base of iron
manufacture and coal distribution which had supported the industrialization and
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