Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Neighbourhoods for the City
- 2 The Political Economy of Cities in Pacific Asia
- 3 The Logic of Comparisons in Multi-Sited Research Designs
- 4 Sungmisan: The Power of Village Social Enterprises
- 5 Mahakan: Neighbourhood Heritage Curation Attempts
- 6 Tangbu: Saving the Old Sugar Warehouses
- 7 Langham Place: Mega Project-Led Inner-City Regeneration
- 8 Tampines Central: Government-Resident Partnerships at Work
- 9 Neighbourhood Action, Metropolitan Politics, and City Building
- Index
- Publications / Asian Cities
6 - Tangbu: Saving the Old Sugar Warehouses
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 November 2020
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Neighbourhoods for the City
- 2 The Political Economy of Cities in Pacific Asia
- 3 The Logic of Comparisons in Multi-Sited Research Designs
- 4 Sungmisan: The Power of Village Social Enterprises
- 5 Mahakan: Neighbourhood Heritage Curation Attempts
- 6 Tangbu: Saving the Old Sugar Warehouses
- 7 Langham Place: Mega Project-Led Inner-City Regeneration
- 8 Tampines Central: Government-Resident Partnerships at Work
- 9 Neighbourhood Action, Metropolitan Politics, and City Building
- Index
- Publications / Asian Cities
Summary
Abstract
While Mahakan (Bangkok) (see chapter 5) reveals a lost battle in terms of community heritage preservation, Tangbu (Taipei) represents a successful case of transforming a set of sugar warehouses into a museum set within a park. The difference between the two cases can be attributed to the democratization movement in Taiwan and the resulting responsiveness of the government to local demands. The Tangbu project is also set within a historic moment, when Taipei installed its first elected mayor. This institutional change created the context for responsiveness and also the entry of more progressive elected officials. Although mobilization led to the successful construction of the Tangbu Cultural Park, there are questions about its sustainability; critics of the project see it as a white elephant (or, as the Taiwanese call it, a building that only mosquitoes visit). Thus, in the context of local collective projects, getting a project built is not the same as ensuring it is sustainable. What is needed is a continued collaboration between local government and community to keep working to make Tangbu Cultural Park appealing to visitors.
Keywords: Taipei, urban heritage, urban redevelopment, adaptive reuse buildings, community museum, community planner
The Significance of Tangbu
If Sungmisan reflects a strong, active neighbourhood working largely without the need for government support, and Mahakan represents a case of a weak but active neighbourhood supported by NGOs and academics in the face of a weak government, then the case of Tangbu shows support from a responsive government. This form of community empowerment forms a key initiative in government-local area relations. This partnership has taken the form of heritage conservation (Wang and Lee, 2008; Lin and Hsing, 2009; Den, 2014), adoption of creative city policies as well as a broad range of community-based services and events (Tsai, 2014).
The case is significant because the collective projects of neighbourhoods like Tangbu are supported by efforts of the city government. These efforts occur at the regulatory level and also enable resources to translate local aspirations into actual projects. An important component of this system is the provision of a community planner. In a system that encourages its citizens to be active, the community planner is necessary for locating a thread through the cacophony of voices at the local level and working out a compromise that is acceptable to various government agencies.
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- Neighbourhoods for the City in Pacific Asia , pp. 133 - 154Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2019