Technology and urban planning rarely come together as concretely as they did in Tokyo this week.
SusHi Tech Tokyo 2026 opened its doors on April 27, bringing together more than 700 startups, around 60,000 attendees, and city leaders from all over the world with a single purpose: figuring out, in real terms, how cities can keep running smoothly in an increasingly unpredictable world. This was not just another corporate event packed with pretty slides and empty promises. It was genuinely a gathering where engineers, mayors, startup founders, and climate experts shared the same physical space to discuss what actually works when a city faces chaos.
And look, we are not talking about futuristic concepts or showroom gadgets here. The event, organized by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, put real issues on the table like flooding, wildfires, the energy crisis, and the race around artificial intelligence, all with a focus on solutions that are already being tested or implemented in real cities. From Governor Yuriko Koike addressing global challenges to reports from Glasgow and Los Angeles about recovering from climate disasters, the first day made it crystal clear that the city of the future is not some distant project. It is being built right now. 🏙️
What is SusHi Tech Tokyo and why does it matter so much
The name might seem odd at first glance, but SusHi Tech is short for Sustainable High City Tech Tokyo, and the event has already become a global benchmark when it comes to urban innovation. Tokyo, one of the densest and most technologically advanced metropolises on the planet, uses the event as both a showcase and a laboratory. It is no coincidence that the metropolitan government is behind the organization: the city faces seismic risks, typhoons, and energy demands every single year that would keep any public official up at night. So when Tokyo talks about urban resilience, the world pays close attention.
In this 2026 edition, the event took on an even larger dimension by placing the role of startups as real agents of urban transformation at the center of the conversation. Not just as technology suppliers, but as strategic partners for governments in building more adaptable cities. More than 700 companies were present over the three scheduled days, many of them with solutions already in pilot stages in cities somewhere in the world, which completely changes the tone of the discussion. Instead of hypotheses, the stage was filled with data, prototypes, and concrete implementation cases.
The presence of representatives from cities like Glasgow and Los Angeles is also an important signal. These are metropolises that have already experienced, firsthand, the impact of severe climate disasters in recent years, and they came to the event not just to listen, but to share what they learned. This exchange between cities that have already been through crises and startups developing solutions creates an extremely productive cycle of applied learning, something rare to see at technology events of this scale.
Yuriko Koike and the landscape of global turbulence
Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike took the stage at the opening and did not mince words. She described the current global moment as a period of deep turbulence, citing a volatile international landscape, increasingly frequent natural disasters, disruptions in energy and resource supply chains, and the rapid acceleration of the artificial intelligence revolution. The message was direct: SusHi Tech does not exist to show off cool technologies, but to help cities remain livable, resilient, and competitive in an era of constant disruption.
Koike also introduced the ambitious goal called 10 by 10 by 10, which envisions a tenfold increase in the number of startups, unicorns, and public-private partnerships in Tokyo. This is not just about making the startup ecosystem bigger, but about making it capable of tackling problems too large for governments, companies, or cities to solve on their own. This vision of collaborative scale ran through the entire first day of programming and set the tone for the event.
Among the initiatives presented, two stood out: the Tokyo Startup Database, a platform to map and connect startups within the local ecosystem, and SusHi Tech Global, a support program designed to help promising startups expand internationally. The latter offers up to 200 million yen, roughly 1.26 million dollars, in growth funding per project. The presence of representatives from Taiwan, Estonia, and other international partners reinforced the central message: sustainable cities cannot be built in isolation. They require capital, political support, and cross-border collaboration.
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G-NETS and building resilient cities through networks
If startups took center stage in one part of the programming, the other half was dominated by the G-NETS network, which stands for Global City Network for Sustainability. Launched by Tokyo in 2022, the network brings together cities from around the world to share strategies for responding to climate and disaster risks. And this is no small group. This year’s G-NETS leaders summit gathered representatives from 49 cities under the theme A New Urban Future Built on Climate and Disaster Resilience.
The breadth of topics discussed made it clear that resilience goes far beyond physical infrastructure. It also involves how cities protect their most vulnerable residents, preserve social cohesion, and keep daily life running when shocks hit. It is a systemic approach that connects civil engineering, public policy, health, education, and technology into a single strategy for preparedness and response. And the reports from Glasgow and Los Angeles brought that theory to life with extremely practical examples.
Glasgow and the fight against increasingly intense rainfall
Susan Aitken, leader of the Glasgow City Council, took the stage with the experience of a city that has dealt with excessive rain for centuries, but is now facing a different reality. Scotland, as she herself noted with good humor, is a very green country precisely because it is a very rainy country, and Glasgow is the rainiest part of Scotland. But not even a city accustomed to rain was prepared for what climate change is bringing: heavier downpours and monsoon-type events that are becoming increasingly frequent, threatening hundreds of thousands of homes.
Aitken described Glasgow’s response as a long-term and highly collaborative effort. For about 20 years, the city has been working through the Metropolitan Glasgow Strategic Drainage Partnership, bringing together Scottish Water, the city council, environmental regulators, and other partners. The White Cart flood prevention project, for example, protected communities where residents had previously been found standing in waist-deep water. And the Shieldhall Tunnel, a major underground project, can store the equivalent of 36 Olympic swimming pools of water during storms, which is then pumped out, treated, and recycled.
What makes the Glasgow case so relevant in the context of SusHi Tech is that the city did not bet on a magic bullet or a single technology. Instead, it built over two decades an ecosystem of partnerships and infrastructure that complement each other. It is the kind of approach that does not make easy headlines, but that truly saves lives when the next storm hits. 🌧️
Los Angeles and rebuilding after the 2025 wildfires
If Glasgow brought the perspective of too much water, Los Angeles arrived at the event with the opposite experience: fire. Dilpreet Kaur Sidhu, deputy mayor for international affairs in LA, spoke about the January 2025 wildfires, which she described as the worst fire in the city’s history and one of the most devastating disasters in California’s history.
Fueled by drought and Santa Ana winds exceeding 100 miles per hour, the flames burned from January 7 to 31, destroying nearly 7,000 structures and devastating the Pacific Palisades area. Sidhu was straightforward in describing the impact: these were homes, these were businesses, these were schools. It was an entire community.
The response from Los Angeles combined emergency action with long-term rebuilding. The city issued emergency executive orders to speed up debris removal, fast-track permits and inspections, relax certain zoning regulations, and incentivize more resilient reconstruction. A consolidated permit and inspection center was created so that residents could handle rebuilding matters with multiple departments in a single location. For the long term, Sidhu said LA is focused on strengthening the resilience of its power grid and infrastructure, as well as improving workforce readiness for firefighting.
The LA report served as a powerful reminder that urban resilience is not an abstract concept. It is the difference between a city that can get back on its feet after a disaster and one that loses years trying to return to where it was before.
Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi and the national role of startups
The national dimension of the debate was also present on stage. Japan’s Prime Minister, Sanae Takaichi, delivered a keynote address and provided the political backdrop connecting startups to the country’s economic strategy. Her central statement was clear: building a strong economy requires scientific and technological capability as its foundation. And startups, according to her, are key pieces in turning Japan’s research strengths into practical applications.
The numbers she presented reinforced the argument. Startups already account for 4% of Japan’s nominal GDP, and that contribution has grown by 32% over the past two years. Takaichi organized her remarks around three pillars: scaling up existing startups, supporting deep tech startups, and creating and developing regional startups. She also emphasized the role of government demand, stating that public procurement aimed at startup products and services, especially through strengthening the SBIR program, is particularly important for sustaining the growth of this ecosystem.
Urban resilience in practice: what the startups showcased
One of the most recurring themes throughout the first day was urban resilience in the face of extreme weather events. And it is worth understanding what that means in concrete terms: it is not just about building stronger structures, but about creating urban systems capable of absorbing impacts, reorganizing quickly, and continuing to deliver essential services to the population during or immediately after a crisis. Water, energy, mobility, communications, and public safety are the pillars that need to stay standing when everything around them crumbles.
The startups at the event showcased quite varied approaches to this challenge. Some focused on predictive monitoring systems using artificial intelligence to anticipate flooding and power grid failures hours or even days in advance. Others presented emergency response coordination platforms that integrate data from different government agencies in real time, eliminating that classic communication bottleneck that turns manageable crises into tragedies. There were also solutions centered on renewable energy microgrids capable of operating independently when the main grid goes down, ensuring that hospitals, shelters, and command centers keep running.
What became clear is that innovation in this sector does not happen in silos. The best solutions presented at the event were precisely those that connect different layers of urban infrastructure, creating an integrated response ecosystem. A single startup rarely solves the entire problem, but when its tools connect with those of other companies and with the systems cities already have in place, the result is a response capacity far greater than the sum of its parts.
Sustainability and innovation as two sides of the same coin
Another central theme of the event was the relationship between sustainability and technological innovation. For a long time, these two concepts were treated as parallel tracks: technology moved at one pace, and sustainable practices tried to keep up as best they could. What SusHi Tech Tokyo 2026 made clear is that this separation no longer makes sense. The cities that are managing to make consistent progress are exactly those where sustainability goals are baked into technological decisions from the start, not as an added layer, but as a fundamental design criterion.
Governor Yuriko Koike touched on this point during her opening remarks, highlighting that Tokyo is already working toward ambitious carbon neutrality targets and that partnerships with startups have been essential in accelerating that process. The interesting part is that she did not frame sustainability as a sacrifice or a cost to absorb, but as a competitive advantage for the city. Metropolises that manage to reduce their dependence on non-renewable energy sources, that better manage their water resources, and that build more durable infrastructure end up being more attractive for investments, talent, and companies that also have ESG targets to meet.
This reasoning resonates strongly with what the startups at the event are building. Many of them built their business models on exactly this premise: that solving an urban environmental problem efficiently is, at the same time, good business. And the numbers are starting to confirm it. Global investments in technology aimed at sustainable cities have grown steadily in recent years, and events like SusHi Tech Tokyo serve as accelerators of that process by connecting capital, government, and innovation in the same environment. 🌱
International collaboration as a differentiator of the event
One point that deserves special attention is the genuinely international character of SusHi Tech Tokyo 2026. The presence of representatives from Taiwan, Estonia, and dozens of other cities and countries was not merely ceremonial. The event was designed so that these exchanges would happen in concrete ways, with joint panels, negotiation rounds, and co-creation sessions between startups from different countries and municipal governments facing similar challenges.
Estonia, for example, is recognized worldwide for its digital government infrastructure and brought its experience with digital identity and electronic public services to the event. Taiwan contributed its expertise in semiconductors and advanced manufacturing, sectors directly tied to the development of IoT devices for smart cities. This cross-pollination of capabilities among different nations within a single event creates partnership opportunities that would rarely emerge otherwise.
For the startups in attendance, this international environment is especially valuable. A company developing air quality sensors in Tokyo might find in Glasgow a market ready to test its solution. A startup from Los Angeles that created an emergency management platform might discover that its product solves an identical problem faced by a city in Asia. This kind of connection is what turns an innovation event into a real catalyst for change. 🌍
The role of startups in transforming cities
Talking about startups in the urban context still generates some pushback in certain public management circles, and that is understandable. The track record of unfulfilled promises, pilots that never scaled, and technologies deployed without accounting for the social complexity of cities has created legitimate skepticism. But what SusHi Tech Tokyo 2026 showed is that a new generation of startups is arriving with a different approach: more collaborative and far more oriented toward the real context of the cities where they want to operate.
These companies understand that a mobility solution that works in Singapore may need deep adaptations to work in Sao Paulo or Lagos. They come to negotiation tables with governments not carrying a finished product, but a co-creation methodology that involves local communities, city technical staff, and territory-specific data. This shift in approach is what is making public-private partnerships in urban technology far more productive than they were five or ten years ago.
Beyond that, the event highlighted that the ecosystem of startups focused on urban resilience is becoming increasingly diverse geographically. It is not just companies from Silicon Valley or Tokyo leading this race. Startups from developing countries are presenting highly relevant solutions because they grew up in environments where infrastructure was already precarious and where creativity in problem-solving is a daily necessity. This perspective from those who already live with scarcity and instability has a lot to teach cities that never had to think about it before. 💡
What to expect from the remaining days of the event
The first day of SusHi Tech Tokyo 2026 was essentially about framing the problem and showing that viable paths are being pursued by cities, governments, and startups around the world. But the next two days promise to go beyond diagnosis. The schedule includes deeper sessions on deep tech, investment rounds, live prototype demonstrations, and co-creation workshops between startups and public officials.
With Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi already putting the weight of the national government behind the startup ecosystem and Governor Koike signaling that Tokyo intends to exponentially multiply its partnerships, the stage is set for the event to solidify itself not just as a conference, but as a permanent platform connecting those who identify urban problems with those who are building the solutions.
SusHi Tech Tokyo 2026 is more than a technology event. It is a barometer for how the world is responding to the urban challenges of our time, and the signal it is sending is clear: the combination of innovation, sustainability, and the power of startups is redefining what it means to build resilient cities for the 21st century.
