Planning in Taiwan

Spatial Planning in the Twenty-First Century

Roger Bristow

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780415551731
• eBook ISBN: 9781136990533
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Estudios étnicos

As a newly industrialised country with highly successful economic growth and political liberation in a short period of time, Taiwan has been viewed as a model for other aspiring countries and regions. This volume focuses on the connection between planning institution and practice and the country's future in terms of political institutions and economic and environmental sustainability.

The book starts by providing a history of planning in Taiwan and situates contemporary Taiwanese planning in the wider global context. The contributors go on to cover challenges to planning, urban change, legal planning, land problems, the development of industrial land, community planning, conservation, ecological land use, planning for natural disasters and transportation planning. The conclusion discusses the challenges for Taiwan in the twenty-first century.

Planning in Taiwan will be of interest to students and academics working on comparative planning, development and politics, urban studies and conservation.

1
Taiwan and the global planning debate

Roger Bristow

Introduction

What planning is, and what it might be about and how it should be done, have been questions that have been around almost as long, or perhaps longer, than planning itself as a set of legal and administrative procedures (for example see Howard’s discussion on garden cities—Howard 1902). Having been born into scholarship in the era of rational comprehensive versus disjointed incrementalism (Faludi 1973a and 1973b, Allmendinger 2002a, Lindblom 1959 and 1979), it is interesting to see how old ideas become recycled in the later world of the twenty-first century, whilst new thinking is constantly added. The biography of this chapter attempts to plot out this sequence by listing theory authors in date order, as well as giving the more conventional alphabetical bibliography. This introduction to the Taiwan story therefore seeks first to ask the very proper question ‘what is planning?’ before going on to place Taiwanese contemporary planning within its wider global context.

Taiwan’s planning story is of course related to the territory’s history (Chapters 2 and 3). Put simply it neatly divides into two, for although the laying out of its present main cities began in the period of the late Ching dynasty at the end of the nineteenth century, modern town planning was a creation of the Japanese colonizers of the twentieth, particularly in major cities like Taipei, Taichung and Kaohsiung. Here the new rulers set out to build and extend the fledgling Ching cities, following western ideals of broad tree-lined boulevards separating neatly blocked commercial and residential low-rise properties. Japanese scholars (Watanabe 2006) have suggested that because of restrictions at home during the 1930s, Korea and Taiwan offered planners of the time real opportunities to implement their new planning ideas, and the Japanese colonies became planning laboratories for the built environment professionals of the governing power. There was also an element of using their colonies as showpieces of Japanese expertise, which copied and then extended the very latest western ideas and concepts, in planning as in much else. Certainly much of the contemporary city in modern Taiwan owes much to the foresight and objectivity demonstrated by its former rulers.

The turmoil of the Second World War, and the following dispute between the Chinese in the civil war period of the 1940s, led to the imposition of KMT (Kuo Min Tang) rule after 1949, when Taiwan formally split from the rest of China. Given the pervading American military presence of the time, it is not surprising perhaps that Taiwan moved away gradually from the prevailing Japanese planning practices of its former masters towards the planning procedures of its new American mentors. But it wasn’t until Taiwan’s request to the United Nations of 1962, and Donald Monson’s report of 1964, that the Taiwan Urban Planning Law was amended (also in 1964) to formally change from the former Japanese procedures to the Americanized Taiwanese form that we see today.

The period since 1964 has seen the gradual extension of planning provisions throughout Taiwan, largely following American concepts of private development rights modified by zoning-style planning restrictions, to which were later added notions on more comprehensive national, regional and city comprehensive planning. But it wasn’t until the early years of the twenty-first century that other planning tools were investigated from elsewhere, such as United Kingdom style planning permissions or planning obligations within development control for example, and sometimes introduced to Taiwan on a limited special-case basis. Nevertheless, it remains fair to say, that because of the pervading American influence and its special links through scholarship, academia and professional practice linkages, that past and present global debates in English on the nature and practice of planning have also affected Taiwanese planning practice, just as they have in their varied originating territories throughout the world. With the global exchange of views allowed by the modern internet, that debate and influence has only intensified in recent years, and Taiwan’s governance and educational systems are now as aware as anyone of the currents of change now affecting contemporary spatial planning thinking.

This book is in part an expression of that interest—the nature and scope of examining present global changes in the special circumstances of Taiwan is of itself a matter of interest, whether looked at from Taiwan or from the perspective of the outside world. This debate has now become two-way, and this collection of contributions is seen as a Taiwanese input to the ongoing global debate on the nature and purposes of modern town planning, as well as a way of informing the wider world of the particular perspectives of current Taiwan planning practice.

What planning is

It is useful to begin this summary about planning with some comment about the terms that have been used variously to define or name ‘planning’. Quite apart from investigating it in various languages, even in English (the nearest, one supposes, to a universal language that we have) many different terms have been used over time and place to represent the professional and bureaucratic processes that have been used to lay out urban areas, to control their development and to protect the rural and natural environments within which cities are placed. Those aware of British planning history would immediately recognize the term ‘town and country planning’ from British texts and laws—a term which emphasizes the complimentary roles of town and countryside in the regulation of humanity’s living spaces. For many years, those familiar with American or European practices have thought of zoning as synonymous with planning, even though in more recent times it has become clear that zoning is really a development control and management technique within a much wider range of contemporary global planning procedures. Thus American practice is currently concerned with comprehensive planning, new urbanism and transit planning, together with urban growth management, whilst Europeans generally (including the United Kingdom) have embraced the ideals of ‘spatial planning’, especially since the inception of the European Spatial Development Perspective of the 1990s. The terminology thus reflects globally the wider planning concerns in the contemporary world of the twenty-first century.

But before we explore this development further, we also need to look at the planning process itself, and what it contains. Many years ago a definition of planning was coined by Dror 1963, which still remains valid almost half a century later: ‘Planning is the process of preparing a set of decisions for action in the future, directed at achieving goals by preferable means.’ It is worth considering this definition in more detail.

First, Dror states that planning is a process. This can have many meanings, but it is helpful to think of it as pointing to a set of procedures, often determined by law and involving governmental bureacracies, to do with the use of land. This means that it is both bureaucratic (a part of governance), as well as an art to do with design and taste. But perhaps most importantly understanding a planning system means understanding how, when, why and by whom planning decisions are made—even though this is often within a formal set of rules and regulations. As always—the reality of what is done is not always quite what it may seem from the printed directions.

This process of governance, whether in government or in private practice, is therefore related to the realities of decision-making—the second of Dror’s statements. It is maybe these processes which lead to the act of making decisions that form the most recent major debate amongst planning academics and practitioners as to what planning should be, rather than what it is. It has become a debate related to who makes the ‘real’ decisions in planning processes, and on behalf of whom. It is a discussion to which we will have to return later in Chapter 12, as it is very much relevant to the present state of planning in Taiwan.

The final part of Dror’s first sentence reminds us that planning is by definition future-oriented, and involves interventions and actions. Future orientation presents a problem of course, for, as is sometimes said to students studying the subject, ‘planners always get it wrong’, or to put it another way ‘planners cannot play god’. It does however remind us that in practicing planning we often have to be realistic, humble, pragmatic in our solutions, and adaptable to change in our plans—rigid master planning is definitely out!

It is perhaps Dror’s last statement that is the most profound, however. ‘Directed at achieving goals by preferable means’ raises some of the most fundamental questions we have to consider about planning—whose goals are we attempting to meet and where do they come from? A common criticism of western planning systems has been, for example, that they are systems of middle-class values, promulgated by white, male, wealthy professionals—thus implying that they have until very recently ignored many parts of today’s diverse societies, both in terms of the solutions they promote and the participation in real decision-making that they allow (Sandercock 1997). The present western moves towards more participatory planning (Hague et al 2003) are an attempt to answer this problem, though with varying success. As with decision-making, this is an issue that is topical in today’s Taiwan (Chapter 6) and to which we will return. ‘Preferable means’ also raises issues of ethics and values—just what is preferable, to whom and by whom? Is it to be valued abstractly, or is it concerned with monitoring, performance measuring and independent review, whether of the process itself, the costs and benefits of its outcomes, or its internal costs as a public or private service? Whilst once again questions are being asked globally, these are Taiwanese issues too, to which we should return.

Another definition of planning has been proposed by Beauregard 2001:438.

If we conceive of planning as a state activity involving simplification and control and if we think of planning as technical analysts providing quantitative justifications for action, then planning is, and must be, a science. On the other hand, if we wish to situate planning between the state and civil society, thereby mediating market-driven forces, or if we view planning as a catalyst for democratic deliberations and practical dialogue, a craft approach seems more...

Table of contents

• Routledge Research on Taiwan
• Contents
• Figures
• Tables
• Notes on contributors
• Preface
• 1 Taiwan and the global planning debate
• 2 Land use planning in Taiwan
• 3 Land problems, planning failure, and the pending National Land Planning Law
• 4 Institutional evolution and the challenge of urban planning in post-industrial Taiwan
• 5 Current planning mechanisms in Taiwan
• 6 Community planning
• 7 Planning and development of industrial land in Taiwan
• 8 Transportation planning in Taiwan
• 9 City conservation and the public sphere in Taiwan
• 10 Resource conservation and ecological land use planning in Taiwan
• 11 Planning for natural disasters
• 12 Challenges for the twenty-first century
• Index