The public auction of the state-owned land in Taipei's Xinyi District, the site of a former army club under the Ministry of National Defense, has excited much controversy. But the perspectives and assumptions expressed during the ensuing debate have suffered from blind spots.
The first assumption is that the central government has only two choices on what it can do with public land: sell it or lease it for business use. The second is that the government will have performed its duty as long as it maximizes its revenue from the land deal, and prevents financial groups from enriching themselves in the process. And the third is that only the central government has any say in the disposal of state-owned land.
If Taiwan, which claims to be a democracy, really intends to pursue sustainable development, people need to take a hard look at these assumptions.
First of all, regulations governing the utilization and control of urban land are based on the Urban Planning Law (
This is because the functions and significance of plots of land differ. State-owned land should not merely be a commodity from which businesses can profit, nor a source of money to be managed by the National Property Bureau's property management committee.
The government's responsibil-ity in the planning and managing of state-owned land is complicated, and involves many issues. The source of the controversy over the management of state-owned land is the establishment of the national property management committee to relieve the government's financial crisis. It also underlines the government's negligence in fulfilling its responsibility to the nation and the people.
According to the principle outlined in the Second Item of Article 50 and Article 52 of the Urban Planning Law, state-owned land should first be used to construct public facilities. What's more, with regard to the number of parks and other green spaces, Taiwan still trails far behind most advanced nations in the world. There are also many problems related to land reserved for the construction of public facilities which need to be solved. The government should not seek to increase its revenue at the expense of the national property.
Control of the use of land should rest primarily with local governments and communities. But what we are seeing is the central government attempting to lord it over incompetent local governments and leaving communities little option but to bow to central government demands.
What are the solutions to these problems?
First, the government should come to value the varied use and significance of such land. The central government should cease its policy of auctioning public land. Local governments should stop playing a passive role in this matter, and attempt to get a clear picture of how land within a particular township or county is being used. They should also map out a strategy of how to make use of the land and implement the plan through urban development.
Second, communities should team up to better understand the arrangement of local public facilities, determine the location of usable state-owned land and come up with their own plan on how to use that land. They should ask local governments to transform these lots into public facilities, and work to reject any disposal that fails to comply with democratic procedures.
These are the proactive measures the nation should adopt.
Hung K. Wong is a professor at National Taiwan University's Institute of Building and Planning.
Translated by Lin Ya-ti and Daniel Cheng
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