The Taipei City Government yesterday said it has eased the regulations it had set for an urban renewal project in the Shezidao (社子島) Peninsula in Shilin District (士林), with the city’s Urban Planning Commission saying that the floor space index for new buildings was raised from 1.76 times to 2.2 times the floor space of old buildings.
Despite the relaxation of regulations, Taipei Deputy Mayor Charles Lin (林欽榮), who heads the commission, said that the higher floor index was not meant to inflate real-estate prices in the area.
Lin touted the Ecological Shezidao option proposed by the city government, which it said would serve as a roadmap for development after it beat three other options in a vote carried out on the city’s “i-Voting” online polling platform.
He said the city had made plans to preserve historic buildings and religious venues by creating green spaces around them.
He said that while many are discussing developing Shezidao, he thinks the area, a flood-detention area overrun by illegal structures, had already been developed, albeit in an “uncontrolled” manner.
He said the plan is aimed at transforming Shezidao into “another world” under the city’s urban planning framework.
In yesterday’s meeting, Taipei Department of Urban Development officials proposed a plan to build a light-rail system comprising seven stations in Shezidao.
However, the plan drew generally negative feedback from commission members.
Commission member Chang Sheng-hsiung (張勝雄) said the plan was unrealistic, because it is hard to determine how many more residents would move into the area after the urban regeneration project and the isolated location of the proposed plan could result in low ridership and create deficits.
Chang said that the city government could build a bus rapid transit system if necessary.
Commission member Huang Tai-sheng (黃台生) echoed Chang’s remarks, saying he doubted the proposed rail system would be of much use, adding that of all the designs the city government has made for Shezidao, he was least impressed by the light-rail system plan.
He said the city should plan transportation links connecting nearby MRT Shipai and Shilin stations and lower residents’ reliance on driving.
If the city government does not enforce measures to regulate the use of scooters and cars, all public transportation plans would be in vain, Huang said.
Lin said that commission members were not against developing transportation systems in the area, but that the rail plan required more deliberation.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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