On July 4, the Cabinet announced four urban-renewal plans. Having read about these plans in the press, I find them very worrisome. Clearly, this is another election campaign strategy of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). The plans are also aimed at attracting foreign investment without due regard for the local consequences, which further highlights the carelessness of the government.
The most obvious mistake the government has made is to designate Keelung Harbor as the site of one of the planned Chinese tourist centers. The primary task of a harbor is the transportation of goods and the government's attempt to revive a port by setting up a tourist center there is likely to become an international joke.
Of the other three locations -- one in Kaohsiung, one in Taipei's Nangang District and one in Taipei's Huaguang Community -- two will force the Taiwan Railway Administration (TRA) to give up some of its land. No planning is in place to provide alternative land for the TRA's operations, which may in the long run result in difficulties in the management of urban railroads.
In addition, these three areas have a massive shortage of parks and other green spaces and suffer from traffic congestion. Furthermore, Kaohsiung has problems with inferior tap-water quality and inadequate sewage systems. If the government doesn't first make a major investment in basic infrastructure, these areas will not be able to attract investment from the international community.
The old Kaohsiung Harbor already has a shopping mall, a trade park and a logistics center built by Uni-President Group, Taiwan Sugar, Chiahsin Cement, China Petroleum and Chemical, Formosa Plastics Group and others. This use of land for both residential and business use means that the area was sloppily developed by the government. A 15-hectare iron sulfate heptahydrate readjustment plant in the area is also suspected of contributing to water pollution.
It would be better to identify which areas are best suited to urban renewal plans by gauging the age of buildings and their state of disrepair based on land use data gathered every five or 10 years.
Experts in the fields of construction, culture, finance and innovation should be selected to form task forces to implement renewal plans. While some areas can be developed by corporations alone, others require the government's assistance in widening road and parks.
Financially speaking, urban renewal should encourage bottom-up participation by residents, businesses and the government. Tax incentives should be offered to land owners. Those who participate from the inception of the project should be exempt from land tax, land value increment tax and house tax. Those who join the project within five years of its completion should have their taxes cut in half. The loss of tax revenue could be covered by selling publicly owned land for which planning has been completed.
Before each renewal project is announced, the central and local governments should reach an agreement on how the construction costs should be divided. This should be based on estimates of probable land value after completion of the project. This is the only way to feasibly implement an urban-renewal plan. Such a complicated and far-reaching national policy should of course be carefully planned.
A truly solid election strategy for the DPP would be to submit a well-thought-out policy for urban renewal projects prior to next year's presidential elections.
Chen Lee-in is a research fellow at the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research.
TRANSLATED BY LIN YA-TI
The White House’s decision to take a 9.9 percent stake in Intel Corp is looking like very shrewd business indeed. Since the government bought in at US$20.47 a share last August, the US chipmaker’s surging stock price has delivered the US a US$43 billion return. One of the reasons the investment has so far proved so sound is that the White House has made sure of it. According to The Wall Street Journal, Howard personally pushed deals on Intel’s behalf with some of the most lucrative clients imaginable. They include Nvidia Corp, the company at the heart of the AI
A single photograph can cut through a lot of noise, but it can also be used to misrepresent the truth. At the very least, it can concentrate the mind on something that requires further investigation. On Monday last week, Ma Ying-jeou Foundation CEO Tai Hsia-ling (戴遐齡) and former National Security Council secretary-general King Pu-tsung (金溥聰) held a news conference in which they showed a photograph of former foundation CEO Hsiao Hsu-tsen (蕭旭岑), now Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) deputy chairman. In the image Hsiao is seated next to Xiamen Taiwan Businessmen Association chairman Han Ying-huan (韓螢煥). The two men were holding
I first met Professor Ray Jiing (井迎瑞) as a film and documentary student at Shih Hsin University’s (SHU) Department of Radio Television and Film in 1988. The following year, he went on to become the director of the Chinese Taipei Film Archive — forerunner of the Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute (TFAI). Over his eight-year tenure, Jiing rescued and restored over 200 classic Taiwanese films. In 1997, he established the Graduate Institute of Studies in Documentary and Film Archiving at Tainan National University of the Arts (TNNUA), and I joined the program in his third cohort of students. Beyond a
President William Lai Ching-te’s (賴清德) May 20 second-anniversary address was not just a routine policy review; it was damage control. US President Donald Trump’s remarks — that he did not want to see anyone move toward independence and that the delivery of a major Taiwan arms package could depend on the progress of US-China relations — unsettled Taiwan’s public and created an opening for opposition parties to question whether Taiwan was being treated as a bargaining chip in Washington’s dealings with Beijing. Lai’s speech was designed to close that opening. The address covered the expected ground: sovereignty, cross-strait relations, defense spending,
RSS