On Friday, 16 October 2026, Masatoshi Funabashi participated as a panellist in “Urban Food Systems for the Future,” held at Tokyo Innovation Base.
The panel discussed how urban food production can contribute to more resilient and sustainable cities, bringing together perspectives on agriculture, technology, ecology and urban development.
Funabashi introduced work on Synecoculture and Human Augmentation of Ecosystems, highlighting how highly diverse vegetation can be used not only for food production, but also to enhance biodiversity, regulate microclimates, regenerate soils and create new interactions between people and living systems.
He also presented examples of Synecoculture in urban environments, including rooftop and other spatially constrained sites. Such environments provide useful testbeds for exploring how ecological self-organisation and human management can be combined to create productive augmented ecosystems within cities.
A central theme of the discussion was whether urban food systems can be designed as multifunctional infrastructure: producing food while simultaneously contributing to biodiversity, climate resilience, health and the quality of urban environments.
For the Human Augmentation of Ecosystems project, this perspective opens a pathway towards integrating urban agriculture with broader research on green infrastructure, ecosystem services and the future design of cities.
Related Link
Urban Food Systems for the Future
Tokyo Innovation Base
Friday, 16 October 2026
https://luma.com/y70ox2nl
Synecoculture and Augmented Ecosystems – Sony CSL
https://www.sonycsl.co.jp/en/worldviews/synecoculture-and-augmented-ecosystems/