Thu, Sep 16, 1999 page2

• Land dispute quelled in Hsinyi

  REZONING The Taipei City Government has finalized plans for the Four Four South Village with a proposal it hopes will keep conflicting interest groups happy

  • By Monique Chu / STAFF REPORTER
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  Amid complaints from various interest groups over the rezoning of Taipei's Four Four South Village (四四南村) -- Taiwan's first military residential compound -- the Taipei City Government's urban planning committee finalized a plan for the partly demolished village yesterday.

  Members of the committee decided to hand over a part of the demolished area to Hsinyi Elementary School, allowing the school to expand by 2.8 hectares, while another 1.3 hectares will be turned into a military village preservation site and a community park.

  The decision not only overturned the city's 1979 plan to turn the entire village area over to the elementary school, but quelled a long-running dispute between the school, cultural preservation groups and community residents over the rezoning plan.

  

  Four Four South Village, located in Taipei's rapidly developing Hsinyi district, will be preserved in part as a cultural heritage site, and the rest of the area, some of which has already been demolished, will be used to expand a neighboring primary school and a community park.

  PHOTO: CHEN CHENG-CHANG, TAIPEI TIMES

  But the village's air-raid shelter, assembly square and a former garrison site -- three highly contested sites -- will be given to the school rather than the preservation area.

  The city government feels it has kept everyone happy.

  "Basically, this decision is advantageous to the three parties involved," said Ou Chin-der (歐晉德), deputy mayor and committee chairman.

  "We've reached consensus on the scale of the area to be preserved [as a military village museum], while at the same time taking into account the future development of the school," he said.

  "And the decision also met the demand of the community residents who had called for the retention of an existing park," he added. In a proposal given to the city's civil affairs bureau in May, the site of the park was slated to be given to the school, he said.

  But committee member and architect Chang Shu (張樞) said that it's still too early for any one group to claim victory.

  "We've evaluated the overlapping areas among parties involved. But if the interest groups are still agitated, perhaps ... this decision didn't please anybody," he said.

  Hsu Cheng-hu (徐成虎), a resident who lived in the village for more than 40 years, criticized the committee's decision, saying it had a disrespect for history.

  "Now you draw the line to exclude the air-raid shelter and the former site of the garrison from the preservation area. Then the air-raid shelter as a witness to history will be gone," he said.

  But Chang said that even if the fort and air raid shelter are zoned into the school's grounds, this does not mean that they will be destroyed.

  "These areas can serve as a buffer-zone for the school. And the school is a cultural institution. I believe the city government will be willing to spend some money to conserve these sites as a distinctive feature of the school," he said.

  Chiu Ying-ping (邱英平), the school principal, said the decision was "acceptable."

  But her major concern, she said, was that the area allocated for the school was cut back based on the expectation of fewer students in the coming years. She doubted if enrollment at her school will drop as committee members predicted.

  But Chang defended the committee's projection on the school's growth as "logical."

  "The fact is that the population in the district is expected to drop because of high property values and a decrease in residential space in this rather commercially-oriented district. So we trimmed the school area," he said.

  The village was the first military residential compound built in Taiwan after the KMT fled to Taiwan after its defeat on the mainland in 1949. The majority of the first generation residents of the village worked as entry-level technicians at the nearby Four-Four Arsenal. The arsenal was moved to Sanhsia, Taipei County, after the city began an urban renewal project in the area in 1984.

  Like other military shantytowns in Taiwan, the village was established to serve as the temporary base for the KMT troops who fled to Taiwan, with the intention that they would regroup and retake the mainland.

  But as the economy developed, the call for demolishing the hastily-built military villages increased.

  In 1996, the legislature passed a statute allowing the villages to be demolished.
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