Laureate Fellow meets Mayor of Kitakyushu City in Japan

Kitakyushu City (Japan) is known for its' forward-looking and assertive culture in sustainability practices, embodying the notion of an altruistic city (1) by its actions. ARC Laureate Fellow Distinguished Professor Xuemei Bai had the opportunity to meet with Mayor Kazuhisa Takeuchi in Kitakyushu City on September 30, 2025. The meeting with Mayor Takeuchi and the following series meetings in the city was a great opportunity to learn about Kitakyushu City’s current initiatives and strategies for the future. Professor Bai was impressed by the large number of active intercity collaboration initiatives spear-headed by Kitakyushu City; over 300 collaboration projects between Kitakyushu and other cities domestically and internationally.

But this was not always the case. Kitakyushu city was once one of the most polluting cities in the world, and has since become a globally recognised front-runner city with multiple international awards in sustainability practices. Additionally, as Sigourney Irvine and Professor Bai write, “[Kitakyushu City] has also been active in international cooperation with other Asian cities in environment and sustainability areas, extending its sustainability experimentation to the wider Asian region.” (2) The paper explores how Kitakyushu successfully achieved this transformation, and investigates how the city has gone on to proactively influencing other cities in the area of urban sustainability practices.

Distinguished Professor Xuemei Bai and Mayor Kazuhisa Takeuchi of Kitakyushu City, Japan. Image courtesy Kitakyushu City.

Mayor Takeuchi expressed his deep resonance with Professor Bai’s view on the importance of altruism among cities and Kitakyushu’s history as an ‘altruistic city, as well as for cities to become transformative agent (3)—a foundational concept of the ARC Laureate Fellowship-- to achieve sustainable and climate safe future. Kitakyushu City also shows a keen interest in applying and testing these cutting edge concepts in next generation sustainability initiatives. Both agreed to work together in updating the vision of a sustainable city and taking on the challenge of leading the world in this field.

The meeting was a rewarding reiteration of how theories from urban sustainability sciences and real-world practices inform one another with the goal of a climate-safe future. We would like to thank Kitakyushu city for this great opportunity, and the support in realising this meeting.

References

(1)  Bai, X. (2024). A case for altruistic cities. Science, 386(6722), eadt4139. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adt4139

(2)  Irvine, S., & Bai, X. (2019). Positive inertia and proactive influencing towards sustainability: Systems analysis of a frontrunner city. Urban Transformations, 1(1), 1. https://doi.org/10.1186/s42854-019-0001-7

(3)  Bai, X. (2025). Cities as transformative agents for global sustainability. Science, 389(6756), eadz3642. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adz3642