International City-to-City
Collaboration

What the two regions share
is not scenery. It is the challenge.

Sister-city agreements are everywhere. Most of them stop at cultural exchange and never connect to industry or research. Ceremonies and courtesy visits continue; the relationship endures, yet nothing is produced. It is the classic path by which international partnerships hollow out.

South Wales and Kitakyushu, by contrast, both grew on steel, heavy industry and energy — and both now face the same question: how to decarbonise while keeping industry alive. Transforming without abandoning what you are built on; changing the structure while protecting jobs and the local economy. For both regions, the theme is unavoidable.

An unprecedented framework,
built from zero by two organisations.

The framework linking Kitakyushu and Wales did not exist before. Connected Places Catapult — the UK government-backed innovation agency — and URBANIX built it from scratch, from selecting the partner region to designing how the relationships would be formed.

City-to-city collaboration fails to reach business when the conversation stays between governments. University researchers, industry, startup-support organisations — unless the people who actually do the work sit at the same table, agreements get signed but never implemented. As the Japan-side partner of CPC's Innovation Twins Program, we have designed everything from delegation visits to agreements, joint research and student exchange as one continuous flow.

Once the framework began to move, organisations joined from their respective positions. We hold separate contractual relationships with each, with clearly divided roles.

• Connected Places CatapultCo-founder of the programmeJoint delivery partner for industry-led collaboration between UK and Japanese regional cities. URBANIX has been the Japan-side partner from the very start
• City of KitakyushuAdvisory & delegation supportExpert advice on the city's draft global strategy centred on UK (especially Wales) collaboration, strategy refinement drawing on European and investment expertise, and advisory on communication tools ／ Interpreting and event operations support for the welcome reception of the Welsh delegation
• Nikken Sekkei & Nikken Sekkei Research InstituteConsultingResearch and advisory on international city-to-city collaboration for the firm's new-business development, including speaking at the December 2025 symposium

A one-off study tour
could never have got this far.

Since 2023 we have kept crossing back and forth. What underpins the projects now in motion is not a single exchange, but the fact that people keep joining a framework two organisations started.

• 2023Connected Places Catapult and URBANIX begin building the UK–Japan collaboration framework. CPC makes its first visit to Kitakyushu
• 2024.08CPC publishes the research report “UK-Japan Innovation Twins for Net Zero”
• 2025.01An official Welsh delegation visits Kitakyushu. We accompany the tour of Nippon Steel's Yawata Works and handle planning, operations and interpreting for the welcome reception
• 2025.09Visit to Wales and CPC with faculty from The University of Kitakyushu (research support), followed by field research on innovation districts in five UK cities with Nikken Sekkei / NSRI
• 2025.12As part of our engagement with Nikken Sekkei / NSRI, CEO Tomokazu Iwabuchi speaks at the Fukuoka symposium “Accelerating INNOVATION Through International City-to-City Collaboration”
• 2026.03Around ten faculty members and students from The University of Kitakyushu visit Cardiff University and Swansea University
• 2026.06Return visit to Wales. Meetings at CSA Catapult, Bay Technology Centre and others advance discussions on semiconductor collaboration

What we saw
on the ground.

MoUs, joint research, student exchange.
The relationship became a circuit.

• OUTCOMERealised an official delegation to Kitakyushu uniting Welsh universities, industry bodies, regional and local government
• OUTCOMEMoU signed between COMPASS Kokura and Tramshed Tech, launching “Green Bridge Digital”, a two-way UK–Japan startup landing programme
• OUTCOMEJoint research between The University of Kitakyushu and Cardiff University is under way, with around ten faculty and students visiting the UK in March 2026
• OUTCOMESemiconductor collaboration is taking concrete shape through discussions with CSA Catapult and CSconnected
• OUTCOMEWithin three years, major Japanese players including Nikken Sekkei / NSRI joined the framework — culminating in a symposium held in Fukuoka in December 2025
• NEXTDiscussions continue in offshore wind, hydrogen and ammonia, and circular industry. As a Japanese counterpart enabler, we are moving to form an “Innovation District Collaboration Working Group” (provisional)