New development plans for the Shezidao peninsula (社子島) in Shilin District (士林區) would place an added emphasis on preserving the area’s ecology, Taipei Deputy Mayor Charles Lin (林欽榮) said yesterday.
“We need to adjust the plans to ensure that they are a ‘three-way win,’” Lin said following the first meeting of a committee commissioned to develop such a plan by Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲).
The new plans need to take into consideration city development, the interests of residents and environmental concerns, Lin said.
Photo: Lin Shu-hui, Taipei Times
Present development plans have been stuck in the environmental review process for the past four years, according to the Taipei City Government’s Department of Urban Planning.
Lin said that because the scenery in the area was “breathtaking” new building rules needed to be drafted specifically for the peninsula, adding that the city should take into account the experiences of European cities such as Amsterdam and Hamburg.
Because construction on the low-lying peninsula has been forbidden since the 1970s, it has some of Taipei’s best preserved riverside habitats.
While previous city government plans had called for the peninsula to be transformed into housing and recreational developments, Lin said that the “consensus ” of the meeting was that the peninsula’s publicly owned land should be “returned to the rivers” which surround the peninsula.
He added that a plan to triple the peninsula’s population would be acceptable under “reasonable” conditions, but said the city would reconsider the specific methods to be used for to develop the area.
Previous plans called for bulldozing the peninsula’s tangle of shacks and workshops and laying down more than 16 million cubic meters of earth to raise the low-lying sandbar several meters above the riverfront.
Ko has said that these plans are impractical because of the expense of bringing in the earth, as well as the years it would take for the earth to settle before construction could begin.
Lin added that while it is not yet possible to “guarantee” when the construction ban would be lifted, he “hoped” that it could be removed within four to five years.
Any alterations to plans to raise the height of the peninsula or dikes surrounding it would likely require rethinking the plan’s rezoning, flood control and environmental reviews, Department of Urban Planning officials said.
In related news, Ko said it was “unbelievable” that the city government had been unable to exact penalties or compensation from Farglory Land Development Co in the face of the repeated delays to the construction of the Taipei Dome project.
He made the comments at a meeting which determined that the controversial evacuation passage between the project site and National Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall would be put on hold while the city considers other options.
Deputy Mayor Teng Chia-chi (鄧家基) said the contract with the firm does not include any articles dealing with compensation, instead calling for “arbitration” or “discussions” in the event of disputes.
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