I AM A PROFESSOR EMERITUS and a Distinguished Professor of Infrastructure Management at the Graduate School of Management, Kyoto University. I currently serve as chair of the National Resilience Promotion Council, which is affiliated with the Cabinet Secretariat of the Japanese government. The global spread of recent online technologies and generative AI technologies is fundamentally transforming the way we work. These technologies are not merely complementary to the systems that support urban societies. They symbolize the fusion of real and virtual spaces and provide new forms of communication that will become the foundation of human society.

In this newsletter, I would like to share my thoughts on hybrid societies, which are becoming increasingly important to consider in future urban and regional planning policies.

In 2023, generative AI, symbolized by ChatGPT, rapidly spread around the world. Before the advent of generative AI, how much time and effort did many researchers and practitioners spend collecting standard information and knowledge? However, if the challenges associated with generative AI are appropriately addressed, it will become possible to instantly and freely obtain standard models using generative AI. Research and knowledge/information businesses will increasingly depend on how much they can deviate from the standard models provided by generative AI. This is an era where such deviation becomes the source of value. With the emergence of generative AI, standard models of knowledge and information suddenly appeared in society. The value of knowledge and information is now evaluated based on these standard models. I would like to call this the “benchmarking of society.”

The benchmarking of society has had a significant impact on the role of universities as institutions that generate new knowledge. Medieval universities in Europe originated from the University of Bologna and were established with the aim of training academic specialists in the fields of theology, law, and medicine. Education was conducted through face- to-face oral instruction. Over time, medieval universities, which had focused on training specialists, began to decline. In the late 18th century, the development of Gutenberg’s printing technology gave rise to a new type of university. With the printing of books and the circulation of academic papers, knowledge and information became dispersed, leading to the emergence of diverse new ideas and concepts around the world. As McLuhan pointed out, an academic world resembling Gutenberg’s galaxy, composed of countless stars, was formed. Advances in IT technology have begun to disrupt Gutenberg’s galaxy. There were simply too many stars in the galaxy. The global spread of online and on-demand education due to the COVID-19 pandemic appears to have accelerated the collapse of this galaxy. Furthermore, the proliferation of generative AI poses a threat to the fundamental principle of Gutenberg’s galaxy — the decentralized production of knowledge and information through books and papers. Of course, generative AI cannot be a co-author of creativity. However, it functions as a standard for evaluating creativity. Traditional educational methods, where knowledge is unilaterally transmitted in lecture halls, are facing the need for fundamental reform. Generative AI achieves the modern standardization of knowledge and information based on the databases available in its time. In fact, generative AI can combine existing logic to create new logic. However, only combinations that humans recognize as meaningful remain as creativity. Knowledge and information can be interpreted in diverse ways. This diversity, which deviates from the standard model, becomes the source of new added value.

It is said that the African continent is characterized by excessive diversity and instability. For example, the spatial distribution of savannas has changed significantly over time. Tribes that depend on specific living technologies are forced to migrate in response to changes in the ecosystem. Tribal societies that are forced to migrate have no incentive to invest fixed capital in specific locations. As a result, the accumulation of fixed capital on the African continent had remained extremely low for many years. In history, settlement of people promotes capital investment in fixed spaces and leads to the emergence of cities. Cities function according to the logic of capital. The capitalization of cities requires ownership (or usage rights) of space. For example, individuals capitalize their living space by placing furniture and durable consumer goods in their homes. However, it is impossible to capitalize space that is not owned. When you leave your home, that space becomes someone else’s space. Urban landscapes and commercial districts are formed through public and corporate investment. In this way, part of urban spaces became public spaces, and individual customization became impossible. However, advances in IT technology began to change this situation. In the real world, space is fragmented, and capitalization is exclusive based on ownership relationships. However, in the virtual world, capitalization (accumulation of content) can occur independently of such ownership rights. As a result, the boundary between the real and virtual worlds has become even more blurred. We now live in a hybrid society where the real and virtual worlds intersect. Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the global spread of telework and online meetings. This is a historic event that can be called the “online revolution.”

The advancement of the real world requires social innovation and human resources to realize it. It requires investment of time and money from many stakeholders, and progress is not always rapid. New social technologies such as monitoring technology, IoT, big data, AI, and simulation are beginning to support the development of real urban spaces. Simulations that consider how people, goods, and information are arranged to move within real urban spaces are now required. This is no longer an era of formulating several alternative plans and comparing them qualitatively. We have entered an era where AI technology can generate an infinite number of alternative plans. The challenge lies in developing a system to evaluate the desirability of three- dimensional spaces. We must now develop an evaluation system for urban spaces that considers not only efficiency but also health and safety.

As hybrid society evolves, several issues have already come to light. Urban digital twins will become an important infrastructure in virtual spaces, serving as templates for creation used by many people. Of course, various legal issues remain to be resolved, such as information security and ownership of information assets. If customization of virtual spaces becomes possible, an infinite number of virtual spaces will emerge. This has groundbreaking significance in terms of urban theory. Among the various virtual spaces created by many people, a few may become famous, giving rise to “influencers” in urban space creation. Within this context, platforms to manage customized virtual spaces — including verifying the originality and importance of virtual spaces — will become necessary.

Human actions in real space are constrained by physical conditions. The information about the actions of avatars in virtual space is observed/ controlled by individuals in real space. Individuals in real space are bound by time constraints. The flexibility of actions in real space is supported by capital and various infrastructures in real urban spaces. Of course, capital accumulated in real urban spaces can serve as templates for infrastructure in virtual spaces, such as digital twins. However, due to the constraints of the body in real space, it seems that the principle that the freedom of human behavior in hybrid worlds is guaranteed by capital formation in real space remains unchanged.

We live not only in the physical world but also in various virtual spaces such as social media and the metaverse. The time of “a day” has begun to be grouped into several blocks. To make effective use of this block-structured time, we utilize virtual spaces including smartphones and social media. We can only focus our attention on either the physical world or the virtual world at any given time. Infrastructure has been invested in cities based on the assumption of the spatial fixity of infrastructure. However, with the advancement of online technology, we can now choose whether to communicate in real or virtual spaces. More importantly, we allocate our time throughout the day between activities in real spaces and those in virtual spaces. It seems that research in regional science must now expand to include hybridized spaces.

Kiyoshi Kobayashi

(Published on RSAI Newsletter 2025 May)