Should Taiwan Abolish Urban Planning?

This is a translation from the original 可否廢除都市計畫？by Hsu Shih-rong (徐世榮), a professor of land policy at National Cheng-chi University. Originally published by Voicettank. Translation by Tim Smith.

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The lives of people and land policies are intimately related in many ways. Land policy is one of the main ways in which the government directly administer its public agenda. Through land planning, usage, and control, the government can promote the public welfare for its citizens, and carry out wealth redistribution. The tools for land policies include urban planning, land use regulations, land expropriation, and urban land rezoning. The most important among these optional tools is urban planning.

Europe and the United States began to employ urban planning at the end of the 19th Century.

The Industrial Revolution quickly brought factories to cities, and the high demand for laborers meant mass migrations of people from the countryside, which caused the population density to skyrocket. In other words, industrialization equals urbanization.

Many poor enclaves in the cities were formed because of the lack of economic rights, causing the deterioration of living standards within cities. Environmental sanitation was also almost non-existent, and communicable diseases were a constant threat to the lives of city residents.  

To solve these problems, centralized, top-down urban planning was born. The main urban planning tool used in that era was the concept of zoning. The government would split up urban areas according to usage, such as residential areas, commercial districts, or industrial zones, and create laws to regulate how the land can and cannot be used. There was the occasional use of land expropriation, or the taking of private land by the government. However, land expropriation in those times was quite rare, because they deprived people of their basic property rights, often bringing about serious conflicts within society.

In short, the original intent for urban planning is to safeguard and promote public interest, as well as a tool to alleviate societal problems.

Urban planning gone awry in Taiwan

Taiwan’s implementation of urban planning likewise began in the late 1800’s with the start of Japanese rule, and the basic framework of Taiwan’s urban plans had mostly been completed by the 1970’s. Nevertheless, urban planning continued unabated, and spiraled out of control. New plans were concocted with impunity and superimposed on existing plans; zones were being changed constantly; the allowed density kept getting raised, and weren’t being enforced anyway; and given how allowed capacity can be traded and transferred, urban planning became essentially meaningless and devoid of all public credibility and legitimacy.

What’s scarier still is that while the US and Europe very rarely expropriate private land, Taiwan’s government too often resorts to land appropriation for its own purposes. From one end of the island to the other, the government is taking large swaths of land in the name of economic development and infrastructure building, which in turn has been incurring the wrath and strong resistance of those residents who suffer from these policies or whose homes have been bulldozed. This has already become a serious issue for Taiwan.  

Mayor of Weyarn, Germany (photo courtesy of Hsu Shih-rong)

Last month, this author traveled to the town of Weyarn in Germany, about an hour’s drive from Munich, for an academic exchange visit. Weyarn has extremely strict land use regulations and zoning laws; and yet, it has never used land expropriation for development. Weyarn’s mayor Leonhard Wohr said, “Recently, the government of Munich’s tried to expropriate private land to alleviate demand for housing in and around Munich, but this brought about such a massive backlash that the mayor of Munich withdrew the plan in the end.” On the other hand, Taiwan has strict land use regulations and controls on paper, but illegal land usage is everywhere. The government wantonly uses expropriation, and when Taiwan and Germany are compared, the differences couldn’t be any more stark.

Put frankly, Taiwan’s land regulations and controls are largely considered “suggestions” rather than law. Whether it’s urban or rural land, much of the usage runs counter to what the law states, but the government doesn’t seem to be concerned, or at most pay lip service to enforcement. Instead, the brunt of the government’s efforts are on land expropriation and urban re-planning to the point of looking like outright plundering. We can’t help but ask, why is our country’s situation like this? Why is the government not evaluating and enforcing land controls and restrictions, which are relatively easier, but instead increasingly implementing the harsh taking of basic property rights and creating serious societal conflicts?

The key is that Taiwan’s urban planning and expropriations have gone awry and away from the original intent of these policy tools. The government is not using these policies to increase the general welfare or to solve social problems, but to benefit those with political and economic power by giving them opportunities for speculation and hoarding. The government itself often uses land regulations for its own gains, and is not shy about it: the Tainan City Government has recently advertised that its “revised urban master plan will create NT$260.3 billion in value,” ironic to the extreme.

Land based finance policies are strictly prohibited in Europe, but common in both China and Taiwan. (photo courtesy of Hsu Shih-rong)

No more land based financing

At the end of this June, the author also participated in the LANDac Conference hosted by Utrecht University in the Netherlands, discussing the topic of land-based financing. There was a student from the UK who mentioned the example of Shenzhen, particularly pointing out that the local government had used land based financing to gain massive financial earnings. On the other hand Klaas van Egmond, professor of sustainability and environment at Utrecht University, emphasized especially that this type of financing method is strictly prohibited in Europe, but it’s strongly favored in both Taiwan and China among other places.

In addition, I’d like to point out that Taiwan’s urban planning, land expropriations and repurposing policies all reflect serious systemic prejudice. Many lawbreakers are from the polito-business elites of society (such as the Guanjun factory in Changhwa County), yet the government intentionally turns a blind eye to this criminal behavior. On the other hand, those whose land is being expropriated or re-zoned are often those who have little if any political or economic power.

Many of those affected are old farmers facing expropriation and zoning, for example, in the Port of Taipei area of the Bali district in New Taipei City, and in Taichung, where the Li-Ming Kindergarten is being edged out by unscrupulous officials. Because of their lack of power to resist, the government is only too happy to start sinking pickaxes and shovels into the soft soil, iron-handedly exploiting these residents’ basic property rights, plundering others’ land to realize their own windfalls.

We can only ask, when the government is unwilling to implement relatively easier land use regulations, then what reason do they have to use land expropriation and urban planning to take the land away? Shouldn’t the government’s policies include at least the basic principles of fairness and uniformity in application to all citizens? If the government is unwilling to use these less invasive measures, then are they able to also let off those whose land is been expropriated or re-purposed, especially if those affected by these policies have very little political power or standing in society?

Taiwan’s urban planning and related land policies have already gone off the rails, and it’s a symptom of Taiwan’s lack of principles and fairness for the public good. When urban planning and land policies are used for realizing the material ambitions of those who already control a disproportionate amount of political and economic power, we’ve reached the point where we have completely forgotten the original intent and purpose of urban planning. Maybe we should just abandon urban planning altogether.