fulbright Taiwan online journal

fulbright Taiwan online journal

Tag: urban planning

Preliminary Reflections on the CKS Memorial Hall

The Fulbright Taiwan program is generously sponsoring my year of sabbatical research here in Taipei, where I am investigating the relationships between public spaces and the emergence of democracy.  I am interested in how Nationalist era symbols and rituals have been used on Taiwan from 1945 to the early 2000’s. Over this period, the Nationalist Party (the Kuomintang, or KMT) at first tried to use symbols and ceremonies developed on the mainland to turn former Japanese colonial subjects into dutiful Chinese citizens loyal to the party’s “revolutionary” leadership. From the outset there was tension and violence between local Taiwanese people and the hundreds of thousands of mainlanders that came over to Taiwan with the KMT, particular during the retreat from the mainland in 1949. As a result, for many residents “national” symbols were full of unintended ironies and variegated meanings. During my year here, I am exploring the uses of public spaces as these symbols were contested and transformed as Taiwan moved from a one-party dictatorship to a liberal democracy. Over time, popular public spaces come to acquire a “superabundance of meanings” (Jones 2000), and this was particularly true in the public spaces of Taipei as new forms of Taiwanese

Read More »

Tiffany Wey: The social life of Taiwanese streetscapes

     Harvard graduate Tiffany Wey studied the sustainability and the reuse of streetscapes in Tainan. During her 2011-2012 Fulbright Fellowship, she observed how the people use the area called “qilou”, a space in-between the street and first floor residents or stores. She found that the qilou is a semi-public space defined through cooperative mediation of the street users and building owner. In this video, she also shares challenges and interesting stories of her stay in Taiwan as an Asian American urban planning researcher.     哈佛大學畢業生魏克珊於2011-2012年獲得傅爾布萊特獎助到臺南研究建築的永續利用與再生。期間她觀察府城騎樓的功能與民眾的使用方式,發現在台灣騎樓空間的使用方式是住家或商家與公眾空間協調下的產物。她也分享了身為一位亞裔美籍都市規劃研究者在台灣所遇到的困難與趣事。

Read More »
Archives

Research & Reflections

fulbright taiwan online journal