From Globalizing Taipei to Learning Amsterdam: Referencing as a politicalizing strategy in Post-Colonial Taiwan
Key information
- Date
- Venue
- Brunei Gallery
- Room
- BGLT
About this event
Chen Yi-Ling
As part of the 2022 SOAS Centre of Taiwan Studies Summer School, we kindly ask that you register to attend.
*Please be aware that this session follows British Summer Time (BST).
Also available via Microsoft Teams
Abstract
In 1996, Taipei City Government held an international conference called “Conference on Strategies for an International City.” This was probably the first conference in Taiwan about the strategies of global cities. During that time, “global city” was still a new term, so the conference brochure used “international city” instead (Taiwan Review, 1996). Since the mid-1990s, how to be a global city became an important goal or justification for urban planning in Taiwan. However, these speculative urbanisms based on the global city goal and encouraged by urban policies resulted in a housing boom since the 2000s. Agitated by soaring housing prices, a social movement demanding social housing started in 2010 and gained wide social support. Suddenly, social housing became a new terminology and policy idea, and Amsterdam serves as an important city for referencing.
This paper will explore how referencing becomes strategies to mobilize policy reforms in Taiwan in the context of post-colonial development and the persistent international isolation due to the pressure from China. The importance of the paper is to demonstrate the international connections of policy ideas and the post-colonial development in cities in Taiwan.
Speaker Bio
Yi-Ling Chen is an associate professor in the School of Politics, Public Administration, and International Studies at the University of Wyoming. Her research interest is about the interaction of urban planning and social change, focusing on urban social movements, particularly those concerning housing access. She has published several journal articles and book chapters on housing, gender, urban movements, and regional development in Taiwan. She recently edited a book, Neoliberal Urbanism, Contested Cities, and Housing in Asia (Palgrave MacMillan), and is currently working on a comparative study of the formation of social rental housing in East Asia, Europe and the USA.
Organiser: Centre of Taiwan Studies
Contact email: hl55@soas.ac.uk
