Urban renewal projects in Taipei and New Taipei City totaled NT$59.2 billion (US$1.88 billion) for the first five months of this year and could easily exceed NT$100 billion for the entire year on the back of government support, the Chinese-language Housing Monthly (住展雜誌) said on Thursday last week.
That would make this year the third consecutive year that renewal projects have been the main source of new construction, despite the time required to complete them, the magazine said.
The trend is most evident in Taipei, where renewal projects are being carried out in 10 of the 12 administrative districts, Housing Monthly research manager Ho Shih-chang (何世昌) said.
Sunty Development Co Ltd (昇陽建設) might launch an urban renewal project in the city’s Xinyi District (信義), which took the developer nearly 30 years to gain approval for, Ho said.
Sunty has another two urban renewal projects in New Taipei City’s Banciao (板橋) and Yonghe (永和) districts, making it the largest player in the urban renewal sector this year, Ho said.
Sanyuan Group (三圓建設) and Lung Ling Development Co’s (龍麟建設) project, “the Diamond Tower” near the Zhongxiao-Fuxing MRT Station, is about to hit the market after two decades, Ho said.
The developers aim to build two high-rise, mixed-use buildings on 1,545 ping (5,107m2) of land that is 37.36 percent owned by the Ministry of Finance.
Sen Yeh Construction Co (森業營造) has embarked on a project called “the City Garden” near Taipei City Hall after spending 19 years clearing legal obstacles and resolving issues with former occupants, Ho said.
Another renewal project in Taipei’s Beitou District (北投) appears the most popular, with an 80 percent sales rate after its launch in late March, Ho said, adding that the project by Huaku Development Co (華固建設) could generate NT$6 billion in revenue when it is completed.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained