Taichung is now Taiwan's fastest-growingcity.
Its citizens are famous for their civility, hospitality,
and laid-back attitudes, th e byproducts of its rural beginnings.
Can Taichung survive a leap into the big league and still
retain its reputation as the City of Culture?
In most of the world's major harbors, at any given time, container vessels owned by Taiwan's mighty Ever-green Corporation will be loading and unloading, justas at many international airports, aircraft operated by Evergreen's EVA Air will be landing and taking off. But so far there is only one city in the world where people can check into an Evergreen hotel, and that is Taichung in central Taiwan. Danny Lin(林正松), the assistant general manager of the Evergreen Laurel Hotel, has been there ever since the hotel opened five years ago, and he helped set up the operation. He points out that the Evergreen Group chose Taichung as the scene of its debut in the hotel business because of the city's potential. "This industry's future depends on a particular area's potential for economic development. Taichung has the location,the transportation, the space, and the environment for economic development, and that means great opportunities for this hotel," he says.
Given these advantages, it is not surprising that Taichung should turn out to be the commercial hub of central Taiwan. Last year, it generated NT$40billion (US$1.25 billion) in sales tax alone--although only a quarter of that was returned to the city by an ungrateful provincial government. Even greater potential lies in Taichung's proximity to mainland China, because it is the nearest major cityto the mainland. If direct links between Taiwan and the Chinese mainland ever come about, Taichung will then be in a good position to share in cross-strait commerce and, given its easy access to scenic central Taiwan, tourism.
So what is it that makes Taichung special? The area was first cultivatedin the early eighteenth century. For a long time, agriculture played the dominant role, and more than one-third of the city's current 163-square-kilometer area is still zoned for agricultural use. It was not until the 1990s that Taichung started to attract investor attention. Large department stores, restau rant chains, hotels,and international banks either already have a presence here, or plan to create one.
Apart from its obvious geographical advantages, one of the most important factors nudging Taichung onto center stage is its successful track record of urban planning and rezoning projects. Liu Ying-jung(劉應榮), chief of the urban planning department of the city government's Public Works Bureau, explains that Taichung was originally laid out by the Japanese as a single-core city for a population of 150,000people. Nowadays, however, it is bursting at the seams, with 900,000 residents and hundreds of thousands of people commuting into the city center every day.
A local cab driver helps puts things in perspective. Driving through one of the city's night markets, he recalls that fifteen or twenty years ago this neighborhood was the most popular place in Taichung for residents who felt like an after-dinner snack. Although many stalls still line the narrow streets, nowadays they cater to fewer and fewer customers. "Just the thought of the traffic and the time needed to find a parking space is enough to kill your appetite," the driver says. "So people either go somewhere closer and more convenient --there are a lot of options now--or just stay home."
It was impracticable to bulldoze the area and start afresh. Setting the problem in the context of the city's overall development, city hall planners believed the best solution was to establish another center to the northwest, where they could build the facilities to meet the needs of a greatly expanded population."The idea was to lure enterprises out of the old area, and thus take some of the pressure off, in terms of traffic and space," Lin says. "It was also a good way of expanding the city and helping with the development of suburban areas."
With this in mind, the first step was to make major adjustments to the original urban plan. A revised plan was formally approved by the central government in 1986, and the city promptly embarked on a series of rezoning projects. "People weren't interested in owning farmland that wasn't worth much because they couldn't build anything on it," says Kao Meng-ting(高孟定) a professor at the Institute of Architecture and Urban Planning of Taichung's Feng Chia University. "So residents have been very supportive of rezoning, which increases the value of their land and benefits them in other ways [for example, by providing them with better public facilities]."
Massive rezoning is so central to Taichung's future that it is worth examining exactly what it entails. It does not mean merely that land dedicated to one use is relabeled so that it can be applied to other uses, although that is certainly an integral part of what goes on. In a typical case, agricultural land becomes commercial land, increasing the amount of space available for building necessary facilities such as office buildings and thus advancing commercial development. The landowner benefits, because commercial land is more valuable than arable fields.The government benefits, because the price of rezoning that the landowner has topay is allowing the authorities to appropriate as much land as they require for public projects such as roads and schools. The acquiring authorities do not need a hugeland-acquisition budget, and they get the land needed for public construction free.An additional plus is that, once rezoning is complete, the acquiring authority sometimes finds itself with surplus land which it can sell. The proceeds are then used to finance additional public projects.
In this way, the new urban plan not only boosted the amount of space available for industrial and commercial development but also improved the overall environment by providing sites for public facilities like landfills, waste incinerators, and cemeteries. "These are things nobody wants in their back yards,"says Kao, who has been playing a key role in revising the urban plan since 1982."Taichung was lucky to be able to lay out such facilities early, because the later you lay them out, the more difficult it becomes."
The attempt to establisha second city "core" is also coming along well. A lot of commercial activities have migrated from the old downtown area around the train station to Chungkang Road,a broad thoroughfare linking Taichung and the harbor. The Evergreen Laurel Hotel,Sogo department store, and the Bank of America's Taichung branch have all moved into the area.
This successful combination of revised urban plan and rezoning has become a model that many of Taiwan's other cities and counties have been striving to follow, but there is undoubtedly a downside. Rezoning turned many poor Taichung farmers into billionaires. Danny Lin of the Evergreen Laurel recalls that when the hotel first opened five years ago, these nouveau riche clients frequently requested its food and beverage outlets to serve up banquets that cost ten times the price printed on the menu, simply to show off their wealth. "Change happened too fast,"says the city government's Liu Ying-jung. "Taichung residents overlooked the fact that it was equally important for them to adjust their attitudes to life."
Liu is not alone in thinking that. "At the moment, Taichung is a city that's half rural and half urban," says Dan Lee(李中), general manager ofthe Taichung Real Estate Investment Association. "True, the hardware facilities urbanized fast, but a lot of people still retain rural mindsets." Lee actually thinks that it is good to maintain some of the traditional old values. Indeed, the city's "half rural" character was what brought him back to Taichung aftera brief stint working in Taipei. "There you have to play everything by the book,"he says, "but in Taichung, human relations are the key."
Asked for an example, he points to the fact that nobody in Taichungis going to make a fuss if their guests arrive a bit late, and people are happy to make time for visitors who arrive on short notice or even without an appointment--somethingt hat would usually be frowned upon in Taipei. Then Taipei residents tend to get downto business immediately, whereas in Taichung a typical meeting will start with tea and chitchat. "We try to make friends here instead of just doing business,"Lee says. "Business is never a problem between friends."
The human factor plays a large part in Taichung because the city has long been a recognized center for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs),which depend heavily on an efficient network oiled by good interpersonal chemistry."Taipei is the hub for big enterprises, and Kaohsiung has heavy industry,"Lee says "People with just a few million [NT] dollars don't have a chance there,but they get a good shot at it here."
As one example, he points to the real-estate business. In Taipei, only a handful of large enterprises can afford the kind of money needed to fund astronomical real-estateprices. But land prices in Taichung are only one-third of those in Taipei, so thereis a place for businesspeople with limited capital. Currently, hundreds of small companies are participating in the Taichung real-estate market. In many of them,just two people--the boss and an accountant--run the entire operation. They takeon individual projects, then farm out design, construction, and sales functions to subcontractors.
For larger projects beyond the capacity of small companies, several of them will band together, get things done, split the profit, and then go their separate ways. "You run across that kind of cooperation everywhere, but it works better in Taichung than in most other places," Lee says. "Connections here are based on friendship, so there aren't the jealousy and suspicion that you find among partners who've gotten together purely for business reasons."
Such close ties between SMEs have helped some companies surmountTaiwan's rising land costs. Singer, the famous sewing-machine manufacturer, only decided to stay in the city because it had already spent several decades building up a network of relationships with various satellite factories that made parts, andits managers knew there was no other place in the world where they could replicate that unique web.
Even friendship has its limits, however. While some SMEs engaged in traditional light industries have moved out, few newcomers doing high-tech wor khave arrived to fill the gaps they leave. Most of Taiwan's high-tech industries are still located in northern Taiwan, with the majority of international trade and financing organizations based in Taipei, so many white-collar professionals who want to moveto Taichung cannot do so because of a shortage of jobs there.
Whether as a magnet for SMEs or a city with the potential to attract larger enterprises in the future, Taichung is used to having to make all the necessary changes on its own. "People in southernTaiwan complain that the central government pays less attention to them than to Taipei,"Lee says. "I'd go farther--I'd say the central government doesn't even know of our existence." This attitude of neglect on the part of the central governmenthas impeded many of Taichung's development projects.
Take the city's mass rapid transit system. Public transportation has long been a problem in Taichung. Few local residents are willing to wait for the handful of decrepit buses that ply only the major routes at long intervals. Residents have to use their own vehicles, and this naturally creates traffic problems. A mass rapid transit system ( MRT) would be very helpful in solving the problem, but the first line, which was originally scheduled to be completed in the year 2000, is now slated to open in 2014. No construction work has started yet.
Inbound and outbound traffic is also a growing problem, becausethe Sun Yat-sen North-South Freeway is no longer adequate. A plan for a second freeway in central Taiwan was drawn up in 1989 but, as with the MRT, the plan has been postponed and the final route has not even been decided yet. "We've heard about a whole bunch of plans," Lee says. "Free way, international airport, MRT. But aslong as the central government's involved, plans remain just that--plans."
So why does the central government continue to neglect Taichung?One reason perhaps is that the city has never spawned a politician who rose high enough in the ranks of the central government to acquire the sort of clout that would guarantee a hearing. The absence of such a figure, as local people see it, stems from their lack of enthusiasm for politics. In Taipei and Kaohsiung it is easy to get up a demonstration, and many people are willing to go on the streets to let off steam or promote a political viewpoint. But in Taichung, there has never been a demonstrationof any kind.
Then what do the city's residents care about? Public safety is high on the list. Part of Taichung's reputation is as a city with a high crime rate, particularly when it comes to burglaries and gangster-related offenses, andthe situation seems to have worsened over the past few years. Danny Lin, faced witha continuing decline in his hotel's food and beverage operations, has deep feelings about this. "When people are worried about their safety, they don't go out unless they absolutely have to," he says. "When people don't go out, there areno commercial activities, and economic development is bound to slacken off."
Lin admits that the hotel has not reached the targets set five years ago. Apart from the issue of public safety, other factors that have affected the management's original calculations are lack of improvement in the city's inbound and outbound transportation, both domestically and internationally, and slow progressin advancing cross-strait relations. Both areas are complicated by complex political considerations, to say nothing of the much-bemoaned policies and attitudes of the central government.
Despite these difficulties, Taichung exudes optimism about the future. Urban planners certainly have much to be happy about. "For a planner like myself, the biggest asset of any city is its potential to become the best possible place for people to live--materially, culturally, and environmentally," Kao Meng-ting says. "Taichung isn't there yet, but the blueprint has been drawn up, and the city is heading in the right direction."