The Taipei City government has invested billions of dollars to construct environmentally-friendly buildings and has designed colorful flower-filled corners all over the city in preparation for an upcoming floral exposition, but a group of artists and architects expressed reservations about the overall environmental impact of the event.
City government officials have considered mainly pro-development policies instead of the big challenge of the future ? climate change, said Wu Ma-li (吳瑪俐), an assistant professor at National Kaohsiung Normal University's Graduate Institute of Interdisciplinary Art.
The budget for the Taipei International Flora Exposition, which will be held from Nov. 6 through April 25 next year, is more than NT$12.3 billion (US$388 million), she said.
Although government officials have been touting the new "green" buildings, many of their policies are not ideal for developing an eco-friendly city, Wu said at a forum in Taipei on Saturday.
The head of the Organization of Urban Re-s (OURs), a group devoted to city redesign, echoed Wu's views.
"While Taipei City Government officials are touting their "green" buildings, they have not considered the fact that the use of cement in the construction of the new buildingd greatly exceeds the carbon reduction," said Huang Jui-mao (黃瑞茂), chairman of the organization.
He also expressed concern that the spaces used for the event would be turned into building sites after the expo and urged Taipei residents to work together to create a more eco-friendly urban environment.
"The city government should not devote all of its efforts to promoting the event, but should use this opportunity to achieve long-term development of the city," Huang said.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift