Expo 2010 Shanghai China recently opened under the full glare of the world’s media. For the duration of this 184-day event, 246 countries and organizations will vie for attention and compete to promote their own interests. By making the city its main theme, Expo 2010 marks the arrival of the urban age.
Statistics show that people living in urban areas constituted more than half the world’s total population in 2007. Every second person now lives in a city, and the trend of global urbanization is unstoppable.
Against this backdrop, one of the biggest challenges facing humankind this century will be solving a wide variety of urban problems and building a people-friendly urban living environment.
By the same token, the way in which we view and manage cities will change as scientific and technological advances are made. For example, the city will no longer be seen as an engineering and architectural construct. Rather, it will be seen as a “living body” belonging to the life sciences.
Solutions must not be restricted to urban design and planning as prescribed by the domains of civil engineering and architecture. Instead, cities need to adopt a far broader view of city management, incorporating governance, administration, planning and legislation.
In particular, space in a city and the activities that take place in that space are so closely interrelated that urban issues such as traffic, land use and housing can no longer can be dealt with independently. Modern problems are best handled through an urban management approach that treats the city as a holistic, complex entity, as that facilitates the effective solution of urban problems and, by extension, sustainable development.
In short, traditional urban planning requires a new paradigm that seeks to re-envision what a city is and develop accompanying methods for managing it.
The question is whether Taiwan is ready for this new era. The government lacks an overall vision for the development of Taiwan’s cities, and it is this that lies behind the merger and upgrading of existing cities and counties to form five special municipalities. At the same time, urban development in Taipei city continues to be restricted by regulations governing floor area incentives in urban renewal buildings. In the face of such developments, I remain extremely concerned that Taiwanese cities will lose their competitiveness.
Lai Shih-kung is a professor in the Department of Real Estate and Built Environment of the College of Public Affairs at National Taipei University.
TRANSLATED BY WU TAIJING
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