Taipei City is to have at least one military compound preservation area but this will not necessarily include the Four Four South Village (
Touring the village in Hsinyi District yesterday, Lung Ying-tai (
"Although I'm the convenor of the ... evaluation committee, I simply cannot use my privilege to tell the committee members what to do, or speak for them or make any promises. The committee just has to reach its own final decision via scientific and professional means," she said.
PHOTO: GEORGE TSORNG, TAIPEI TIMES
Yesterday's tour was Lung's second trip to the site since the bureau launched the NT$820,000 evaluation project in January.
The evaluation, which is expected to be completed by the end of the year, is studying the possibility of designating some of the city's 186 military compounds as conservation areas.
In January, conservationists filed an application requesting the bureau designate the village as an historic site in a bid to stop the demolition scheduled for this month.
More than half of the village has already been demolished and only some 70 buildings remain. The city government plan is to level all of the village except for four homes, which are in better condition and will be used as a museum, a library, a community center and an education center.
According to the Cultural Heritage Preservation Law (
Lee Yuan-hung (
"We won't touch a single stone in the village until the cultural affairs bureau makes its final decision," he said, adding that the decision might be made by the middle of the month.
Wang Ying-ta (
"Culture is not something that can be determined with scientific means," he said. "I'm afraid that if that's the case, the bureau will find that its schemes will backfire."
A former resident of the village, Lan Huai-hui (
"The village, which symbolizes the legacy of the blue-collar workers, presents a dramatic contrast to the high-rise modern buildings in the district. It just doesn't make any sense to me that the city refuses to recognize its historic richness and significance," she said.
There is widespread speculation that the military may be have added to the year-long controversy surrounding the complex, because it had once owned the land.
A former village resident, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that although he does not know exactly what the deal is, he is sure that the military is manipulating the situation behind the scenes.
"It already violated the rights of the residents when it failed to hand down the NT$130 million in compensation after it received the money from the city government," he said. "Three hundred out of the village's 400 families were supposed to receive compensation, but only a dozen eventually did."
He said his family was supposed to get NT$200,000 in compensation for their 11-ping house, but didn't get anything. They ended up having to pay NT$4.8 million for a newly constructed 14-ping apartment located on the second floor of a building in the area.
Other families are even worse off, he said, having to pay as much as NT$10 million to buy a new apartment, or NT$500,000 to NT$600,000 per ping.
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