Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) yesterday said in the US that Taipei would model its high-tech sector after that of San Francisco to promote innovation and help the city become the innovation hub of Asia.
Ko made the remarks after what he said was an “inspiring” talk with San Francisco Mayor Edwin Lee, during which Ko said Lee gave him an overview of the city’s industries that provided him with insight into why San Francisco is the most innovative US city.
Ko said that “what San Francisco stands for in the US, Taiwan could stand for in Asia,” and that he would think about how to make Taipei Asia’s innovation hub from what he learned from Lee.
An innovative business sector would encourage people to establish firms, which in turn creates jobs, Ko said.
“This is why after he [Lee] assumed office, the unemployment rate dipped from more than 9 percent to just 3.3 percent,” Ko said. “Following this logic, [we should think about] how to make Taipei the friendliest place for start-ups.”
Ko said the two cities have a lot in common, for example they both face the problems of skyrocketing house prices traffic congestion problems in areas where high-tech firms are concentrated.
To respond to soaring real-estate prices, San Francisco has “affordable housing,” which is similar to Taipei’s “public housing, he said.
Ko said that traffic congestion is a trade-off for business development.
He said Lee encouraged people to share their cars with others and said the key to alleviating traffic congestion is more people using public transportation.
“I learned that every metropolitan area faces similar challenges and there are only so many strategies to choose from,” he said.
Ko later visited the San Francisco 911 Call Center, where he said he was impressed by each staff member there keeping track of seven monitors at once.
He expressed great admiration for the city’s distribution of labor in its disaster prevention work after he learned that Lee is not required by San Francisco residents to be at the disaster response center during typhoons or after a natural disaster.
“Taiwanese politics is too phony. How can anyone sit in one place for three days straight?” asked Ko, who had attracted controversy when his wife, Peggy Chen (陳佩琪), posted on Facebook on the eve of Typhoon Soudelor in August last year that Ko had finally had a chance to eat his dinner at home, which sparked criticism that Ko was “slacking off.”
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