Cultural heritage groups yesterday proposed a plan to use historical architecture for social welfare facilities and public housing amid controversy over redevelopment plans for Jiahe New Village (嘉禾新村) — a recently vacated housing area for military dependents near Taipei’s Gongguang area (公館) in Zhongzheng District (中正).
The proposal was made during a public hearing hosted by Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Taipei city councilors Lee Ching-feng (李慶鋒) and Rosalia Wu (吳思瑤).
Jiahe Studio spokesperson Yu Liang-kuei (郁良溎) said that the village could provide public housing and social welfare facilities for disadvantaged groups.
He said that medical and academic institutions nearby made the village ideal for a public housing program for disabled and elderly people.
Yu said that the plan could use resources from Tri-Service General Hospital, as well as National Taiwan University’s Department of Social Work and Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center, which conducts research on prosthetic limbs and orthotic devices.
The proposal marked a break from past cases concerning the use of historic architecture, which mainly focused on tourism or cultural industries.
Academia Sinica researcher Chang Mao-kuei (張茂桂) said the new proposal displayed continuity with the original purpose of military dependents’ villages, as such places could be considered a type of public housing focused on providing care and services to military personnel.
He said that earlier examples of revamped housing areas designated for military dependents often resorted to “fads” and lacked thorough consideration.
Built upon the former site of a Japanese artillery compound, Jiahe New Village was constructed mostly in the 1950s to provide accommodation for military personnel who arrived from China after the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) defeat in the Chinese Civil War.
Earlier plans to tear down the village and construct a large park elicited mixed reactions, leading to clashes between cultural preservation groups and local landowners, who supported plans for the government to expropriate the land.
A cultural heritage evaluation meeting organized by the Department of Cultural Affairs is to take place on Friday, following an inspection of the village’s cultural assets by city-appointed inspectors.
The village could be demolished if the committee fails to designate the community as a cultural landscape at Friday’s meeting.
Given the broad scope of the case, Lee said that a special task force led by a deputy mayor should be established to ensure adequate authority while implementing new proposals.
South Korean K-pop girl group Blackpink are to make Kaohsiung the first stop on their Asia tour when they perform at Kaohsiung National Stadium on Oct. 18 and 19, the event organizer said yesterday. The upcoming performances will also make Blackpink the first girl group ever to perform twice at the stadium. It will be the group’s third visit to Taiwan to stage a concert. The last time Blackpink held a concert in the city was in March 2023. Their first concert in Taiwan was on March 3, 2019, at NTSU Arena (Linkou Arena). The group’s 2022-2023 “Born Pink” tour set a
CPBL players, cheerleaders and officials pose at a news conference in Taipei yesterday announcing the upcoming All-Star Game. This year’s CPBL All-Star Weekend is to be held at the Taipei Dome on July 19 and 20.
The Taiwan High Court yesterday upheld a lower court’s decision that ruled in favor of former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) regarding the legitimacy of her doctoral degree. The issue surrounding Tsai’s academic credentials was raised by former political talk show host Dennis Peng (彭文正) in a Facebook post in June 2019, when Tsai was seeking re-election. Peng has repeatedly accused Tsai of never completing her doctoral dissertation to get a doctoral degree in law from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in 1984. He subsequently filed a declaratory action charging that
The Hualien Branch of the High Court today sentenced the main suspect in the 2021 fatal derailment of the Taroko Express to 12 years and six months in jail in the second trial of the suspect for his role in Taiwan’s deadliest train crash. Lee Yi-hsiang (李義祥), the driver of a crane truck that fell onto the tracks and which the the Taiwan Railways Administration's (TRA) train crashed into in an accident that killed 49 people and injured 200, was sentenced to seven years and 10 months in the first trial by the Hualien District Court in 2022. Hoa Van Hao, a
RSS