Three cities chosen for Sustainable Cities Challenge

The Italian city of Venice, US city of Detroit and Indian city of Varanasi have been selected to host innovation challenges as part of the Toyota Mobility Foundation’s Sustainable Cities Challenge.

The cities were chosen from a shortlist of 10 cities announced in November 2023. Over 150 cities from 46 countries entered the challenge.

Creating a mobile society

The Toyota Mobility Foundation was established in August 2014 by the Toyota Motor Corporation to support the development of a more mobile society “in which everyone can move freely”. As well as the Foundation, Venice, Detroit and Varanasi will work with Challenge Works, which designs and delivers open innovation challenges, and the global research organisation, World Resources Institute, to design local open innovation challenges tailored to their respective mobility needs.

The goal of the $9m global initiative is to help cities accelerate toward sustainable mobility, fostering healthier and safer urban environments while enhancing people’s ability to commute, work, study, and access services.

The City Challenges will be launched for innovator entry over the next two months, inviting global innovators to access a share of $3m in funding per city to demonstrate their solutions.

Innovators from across the globe with solutions ready to be tested are invited to respond to the specific issues. The innovative solutions that best meet the needs of the city (or the criteria for the City Challenges), will be selected to be supported. Together, the cities and selected innovators will test, further develop and deploy solutions using real-world data, with access to transportation departments and infrastructure.

Host cities and their challenges

Venice, Veneto, Italy  –  launching 11 June 2024. Venice is often pictured solely as a historic city famous for its intricate network of canals. Nevertheless, the majority of the population lives and works in the mainland suburbs such as Mestre, Marghera and other motorised islands, which serve as a crucial transportation hub connecting Venice to the mainland and beyond.

With a mobility landscape that is truly multimodal, including land and water transport, the city has invested significantly in sustainable mobility infrastructure and services. In the Venice City Challenge, the city seeks innovative solutions that shift behaviour, encouraging an increased use and adoption of existing sustainable transport modes.

“Our aspiration is that the ideas generated can serve as models for global replication, creating a ripple effect that positively transforms urban experiences worldwide”

Morris Ceron, director general at the City of Venice, said: “Participating in this international-level Challenge will allow us to enhance the actions already put in place, such as the significant extension of the bike lane network, implementing hydrogen and electric local public transport, introducing bike-sharing and car-sharing services, setting up the "smart control room" for more orderly flow management, as well as offering new stimuli on how citizens, with their own behaviour, can be protagonists of this change.”

Detroit, Michigan, USA – launching on 29 May 2024. Known worldwide as the ‘Motor City,’ Detroit is working to show the world that sustainable mobility is part of what makes this ‘Motor’ move by seeking innovators who can help the City deploy clean and cost-effective mobility solutions as part of this transition.

The Challenge is focused on Eastern Market, ​​​​the nation’s largest food production and distribution centre, where a growing residential and commercial presence means that the City wants to explore solutions that help preserve the health and wellbeing of the Eastern Market community as it carries through with expansion plans. More specifically, the Detroit City Challenge will seek solutions that reduce fossil fuel use and cut costs of freight operations in the Eastern Market, by increasing efficiencies and unlocking opportunities for clean freight technologies.