Taiwanese planning law : a historical review and comparison with Hong Kong

Shih, Wei-chuan (2019) Taiwanese planning law : a historical review and comparison with Hong Kong. Doctoral thesis, Birkbeck, University of London.

Abstract

This thesis compares the evolution of urban planning systems and related laws that operate within Taiwan and Hong Kong. By conducting a historic review, this thesis studies how planning laws and urban plans have been made, shaped and written, as well as their effects on spatial development. Borrowing from Patrick McAuslan’s “Ideologies of planning law” concept, this thesis observes that planning laws are compromised products of domestic and foreign socio-political forces beyond planners’ control, with three competing ideologies (private property, public interest and public participation) dominating at various stages of the respective planning systems. On the surface, the private property and public interest ideologies appear to contradict each other. However, historically examining the implementation of urban planning by the developmentalist states of Taiwan and Hong Kong reveals that both ideologies have and still do serve the interests of certain power blocs and property developers. While the public interest ideology was upheld, the racial factor and sanitation syndrome present in the urban regularisation resulted in spatial apartheid and the ideology serving the interests of the colonial forces occupying each territory; while the private property ideology was upheld, the betterment of certain people’s property right was built on less privileged people’s losses. Researching the interaction between building violations and informal housing concludes that laws can be arbitrary and fluid in practice, with the line of legality having to be drawn and redrawn. With disadvantaged people living in informal housing, building violations eased government responsibility in relation to the burden on housing and intervening in the property market. While the first two ideologies sustain the existing capitalist system with an emphasis on a functional property market, the third ideology has the potential to become an oppositional ideology to the status quo if planners acknowledge that planning law is not apolitical but an arena for challenging the existing administration.

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