The Mori Art Museum Holds Roppongi Hills 10th Anniversary Global Conference Today

To mark the 10th Anniversary of the Roppongi Hills, The Mori Memorial Foundation's Institute for Urban Strategies (Heizo Takenaka, Director), the Mori Art Museum (Yoshiko Mori, Chairperson) and the education institute targeting businesspersons, Academyhills (Heizo Takenaka, Director), both operated by the Mori Building Co., Ltd. (Shingo Tsuji, President and CEO), will host the Global Conference "Innovative City Forum," to discuss the future of cities, from today, Oct. 16 (Wed.) to Oct. 18 (Fri.), 2013 at Roppongi Hills.

Discussing Cities: A Hot Topic as Global Urbanization Progresses At present, approximately half of the world's population lives in cities and it is predicted that this proportion will exceed 60% in 20 years' time. Amid this, "cities" are receiving attention as a new challenge, alongside globalization, and environmental and energy issues. At the same time, while the underpinnings of our city lifestyles are changing due to technological innovations in information and medicine, etc., the creative industry is becoming increasingly important to enrich and improve the quality of people's lifestyles. We believe that the question of how we live in our cities will have a tremendous influence on people's future happiness. Global Authorities will Speak on "Urban Policy," "Innovation," and "Culture & Creative" More than 40 eminent persons, including Joichi Ito (Director of the MIT Media Lab), Glenn D. Lowry (Director of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMa), New York), and Hiroo Ichikawa (Dean of Meiji University Professional Graduate School), will appear at the "Innovative City Forum," to discuss how we should build our cities of 20 years from now, based on the theme of "Designing the future for global cities and lifestyles," from the 3 perspectives of "Urban Policy and Strategy," "Innovation," and "Culture & Creative."

The conference is composed of 19 programs, including a keynote speech by Naoki Inose, Governor of Tokyo Metropolitan Government, a session to discuss the values of tomorrow's cities based on the "2013 Global Power City Index"1 (to be published on Oct. 16), and a session in which members of the Mori Art Museum's International Advisor Committee,2 etc., discuss art galleries and creative cities of the future, and roughly 4,000 people are expected to attend this Global Conference. By hosting this "Innovative City Forum," amid intensifying interurban competition, and as urban renaissance of Tokyo accelerates in preparation for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, we intend to provide an opportunity to discuss and propose the sort of global cities and lifestyles we should strive for in the future. 1 From the perspective that the "Global Power" of a city consists of its comprehensive power to attract creative people and excellent companies from around the world, The Mori Memorial Foundation conducts its own unique survey, to evaluate and rank the global power of the world's major cities, the first global power city ranking in Japan. 2 An organization comprising directors from the world's foremost art museums, who advise on the Mori Art Museum's exhibitions tours and people exchanges, etc.