To promote urban regeneration and economic development in response to the competition between cities — one of the results of economic globalization — most city planners want to create an ideal, attractive environment capable of attracting both talented people and capital, and then use that to market the city.
To this end, cities are looking for means of renewal and regeneration, and they sometimes even copy successful ideas from each other. The London Eye, for example, has become a major tourist draw and it has been followed by several other cities building their own Ferris wheels.
Another example is New York City’s High Line, the elevated railway line that has been turned into a park, which was followed by the Seoullo 7017 in Seoul.
However, this “copy and paste” approach to urban renewal might be carried out based on an incomplete understanding and the view that imitation will necessarily be successful. Sometimes there is even a complete lack of development strategy and the only reason for getting something is because someone else has it.
Normally, this kind of imitation focuses on external factors, such as form and application, while ignoring things like ideas and substance. From a planning perspective, such projects can easily slide toward a focus on quantity alone, while forgetting the quality aspect, which in its turn results in a pursuit of short-term output, while ignoring long-term outcomes and a diversified effect.
Taiwan’s imitation of urban renewal in Japan suffers from such short-sightedness and pursuit of quick returns. However, following the Wenlin Yuan (文林苑) urban renewal project in Taipei’s Shilin District (士林) and the urban renewal-related Constitutional Interpretation No. 709, all discussions about legal amendments have focused on procedural justice and increased efficiency, while forgetting about core values.
For example, urban renewal should be a means to an end, but it has been misunderstood as the goal of urban regeneration. In other words, it should be one of many ways to drive urban development and solve urban issues, but — due to manipulations by the political system and the market — it has been distorted and instead become a matter of urban renewal for its own sake.
The conflict between development efficiency and procedural justice is a result of trying to carry out as much urban renewal as possible as fast as possible.
However, there is sure to be those who will say that this view is neither objective, nor fair. In an attempt to refute it, perhaps they will bring up the issue of urban disaster prevention, or Article 1 of the Urban Renewal Act (都市更新條例), which states that the act is intended to “revitalize urban functions, improve urban living environments and to increase the public interest.”
However, when it comes to disaster prevention, surely Taiwan cannot be restricted to “reconstruction, renovation or maintenance,” as stated in Article 3, Item 2 of the act. At the very least, the main focus of urban renewal surely cannot be the kind of reconstruction that completely eradicates everything in the area where it is to take place — as is the current norm.
Simply rebuilding ugly areas will not necessarily regenerate a city. If urban renewal is a means to revitalization, then the focus of the debate should be on which sustainable urban functions, appropriate living environments and shared public interests should be the goals of urban renewal.
Treating the means as and end in itself is a mistake, and this is one of the reasons for the inefficiency and disregard for social fairness and justice that beset urban renewal in Taiwan.
Shih Chen-hao is a city designer.
Translated by Perry Svensson
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