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WHAT IS MT?
THE MILLENNIUM TOWN PROJECT (MT)
will be an innovative and sustainable town established to promote international cooperation and sustainable development. It is a town located in the Greater Bangkok region that will be a culturally diversified, socially interdependent, safe, caring and economically sustainable “city” in Thailand.
CONCEPTUALLY
MT will be developed and modeled on the United Nations’ Agenda 21 (Sustainable Development Goals) blueprint,
an outcome of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, which focuses on sustainable development.
PHYSICALLY AND ENVIRONMENTALLY
MT will be designed to become the first model town that features all facilities and services that a Smart City/Green Town will provide. It focuses on products and services that concentrate on advanced and hi-technology to make life safe, easy, and convenient, and productive.
MT will be specifically created for active Japanese professional retirees (age 55+) and green multinational corporations (MNCs) already doing business in Thailand or planning to invest in Thailand or the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC). As a global city, MT will serve as a center for the exchange of people, goods, capital, and information, as well as for technology and research to offer a better quality of life for its residents, but also for other actively aging populations around the globe.
One unique feature of this project is that it offers opportunities for active Japanese retirees who wish to stay healthy and productive by using their personal and professional abilities to work at their own pace after retirement. The residents of MT will serve as part-time advisors, coaches, trainers, mentors, or volunteers in projects aimed at promoting sustainable development. and their professional experience, skills, knowledge, know-how and interests will be matched with public- or privately-funded projects in Thailand.
MT will be a “win-win” for: 1) the 30,000 or more Japanese, Thai and other foreign professional retirees who will live and work there; 2) the green and knowledge-based businesses (particularly MNCs) located in Thailand who wish to stay economically competitive by reducing overseas investment costs, especially the cost for expatriate personnel recruitment and hiring; and 3) the Thai, Japanese and international companies that shall provide high-quality goods and services to the Japanese residents and other business entities participating in the the JTMT project, including state-of the-art healthcare services that meet Japanese or international standards. The Town will serve as an education and training center which facilitates the transfer of knowledge, know-how and technology on many levels and in different sustainable development fields.
MT is a bold and path-breaking social experiment that will offer a new modality of migration from the world’s most developed nations to other nations whose economies are still evolving, thereby reversing the trend of traditional migration from poorer countries to richer ones. And at the same time, this project will create an entirely new concept of a planned community that integrates the principles of economic sustainability, impeccable ecological standards, and self-empowerment to serve as a model for a shared human future by unleashing the power of “active aging” as a global public good.
This project has been created by Global City Development Co., Ltd. (GCD), a Bangkok-based social enterprise founded by Pannaritsara Chuenjitrabhiramon, an innovative Thai entrepreneur with extensive experience in the private, governmental, and non-profit sectors in Japan, Thailand, and the USA. GCD is not a real estate developer or construction firm: it is the first and the only social enterprise in Thailand that specializes in the strategic planning and developing of both national and international mega-projects. For over 20 years, the founder of GCD has served as a practical “think tank” and “executor “of several projects that government agencies and/or international organizations aimed to implement but lacked the know-how, human resources, or network to realize or were limited by their own organizational structure, thus preventing them from successfully launching the projects. GCD will design and execute all aspects of the the JTMT initiative.
GCD is committed to creating a world-class social enterprise project that will combine solid financial and commercial practices with a strong focus on addressing the enormous growth opportunities of the greater ASEAN region. And GCD intends MT to create a new paradigm for addressing the urgent global problem of aging populations through a unique new public-private partnership (PPP).
The highest design and execution standards are reflected by the fact that GCD has already had positive, detailed discussions with one of the two largest Japanese urban planning and real estate/new city developers and a world-renowned Japanese architect, and is already working with Japan’s top PR/marketing and branding/media company (Nikkei Business Publications and its Nikkei Cleantech Institute), and a supremely qualified Thai construction management company (Building 33 Co., Ltd.). By selecting the best companies in their respective fields, GCD will be able to complete this remarkable project on time, within budget, and meeting both Japanese and international standards.
With the regional economic integration mechanisms of the AEC beginning this year, there has never been a better time to invest in Thailand and Southeast Asia. To advance their growth and stay economically competitive, Japanese corporations will continue to relocate outside Japan and further invest in the Asian market, where the demand for Japanese products and services can only accelerate in a population of approximately 1 billion people. To successfully invest in this vast overseas market, strategic location, precise timing and a qualified workforce will be indispensible.
GCD realizes that the need for qualified Japanese personnel in Thailand will be acute and is responding to this need by instituting a rehiring, recruitment, and job placement structure that will facilitate the employment of active Japanese retirees who want to remain productive by working outside Japan. By relocating to Thailand, active retirees can continue to live much more comfortably and enjoy a better quality of life than in Japan, where the limited income from government pensions and severe resource constraints (cost of living, scare housing opportunities) have made retiring comfortably in Japan out of reach for many. Thailand, the AEC, and local Thai businesses and individuals will benefit greatly from this influx of educated, skilled, experienced, disciplined, and public-minded Japanese “trend setters” who will continue to contribute greatly to the Japanese, Thai, and global economies. Also, the Thai and Japanese Governments will benefit from increased tax revenues from both the increased business activity and from residents’ income taxes. This synergy of mutual benefits will strengthen relations between Japan and Thailand.
Finally, this project will create a bold new paradigm for the urgent global social policy problem of how to engage fast-growing populations of aging people: it will do this across borders through an innovative public-private partnership (PPP) to reduce the burden on governments by mobilizing the remarkable talents of professional retirees who currently have no means of remaining economically productive in their societies. To further this ambitious goal, GCD will register a non-profit entity that will monitor and study the MT experience from the beginning, offering opportunities in socio-medical research to top academic and scientific partners from around the world.