After Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) announced that the Taipei City Government would push for the dissolution of the city’s contract with Farglory Group (遠雄集團) for the Taipei Dome complex, the future of the project has become the focus of media and public attention.
This is an analysis of the injustice created by the dome space from the perspective of spatial justice and a suggestion for how to return spatial justice from the perspective of corrective justice.
Spatial justice can be examined by looking at whether the process through which a space was created was in line with distributive and procedural justice. Distributive justice involves the equality, difference, fairness and efficiency principles, while procedural justice stresses procedural fairness and administrative neutrality.
The equality principle demands that individuals and groups be treated equally. The site of the project was once home to the Songshan Tobacco Factory, a social resource. As the site of the Taipei Dome and a shopping mall, the area cannot be used for a park, public housing or other public use.
In Abraham Maslow’s “hierarchy of needs” theory, watching baseball is categorized as a higher-order need, as opposed to a fundamental one. Giving priority to allocate social resources to satisfy higher-order needs is a violation of the equality principle.
The difference principle demands that the long-term expectations of the least advantaged group should be maximized. Using the site of the Songshan Tobacco Factory for the Taipei Dome makes no contribution to those at the bottom of society, which means that the project violates the difference principle.
The fairness principle is a “deserts principle,” according to which benefits that people deserve must be proportionate to what they contribute. In this case, the Taipei City Government made excessive concessions to allow the investor to obtain high profits that it does not deserve, which means that the project violates the desert principle.
The efficiency principle demands that distribution should not be made at the cost of certain people’s losses. Since the dome project could harm the environment, local neighborhoods, historical remains and public safety, it is a violation to the efficiency principle.
Procedural justice emphasizes procedural fairness and administrative neutrality in the distribution of resources, so it is obvious that the project violates procedural justice.
The production of the Taipei Dome space clearly violates the principles of justice. As Ko plans to dissolve the contract with the investor, he should seriously think how to correct the mistake and remedy the losses from the perspective of corrective justice. Otherwise, the contract’s dissolution might result in even greater losses.
That the creation of the Taipei Dome is unjust, perhaps Ko should terminate the contract by claiming that a breach of contract is caused by damages attributable to the other party. He should announce that the city would not buy the construction and demand that the other party remove it within a specified period of time. Violations attributable to the contractor are a serious delay in schedule, failure to follow the construction plan and unresolved public safety problems.
After the contract’s termination, the Taipei City Government can keep the office buildings and the hotel on the site, and raise funds to pay for the contract’s termination through selling superficies rights to the property.
As for the dome, the movie theaters, the shopping mall and other buildings on the site, they could be replaced by a park after their demolition.
Yang Chung-hsin is a retired research fellow of Academia Sinica’s Institute of Economics.
Translated by Eddy Chang
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