Challenges of environmental planning and grassroots activism in the face of IT industrial dominance: A study of science-based industrial parks in Taiwan (China)

The high-tech explosion of the 1980s coupled with the economic boom of the 1990s led to the rapid worldwide expansion of information technology (IT) industry. In the case of Taiwan, the IT industry has been a strong contributor to domestic economy and transformation of Taiwan's industrial structure. The rapid rising of IT industry, with unquenchable support with government policies and subsidies, has shown its dominance in the political and economic restructuring process of Taiwan. However, its actual and potential environmental impacts have not drawn the equivalent concerns as the efforts have been made for IT development.; This research focuses on analyzing the complexity of development problems, planning mechanism, and grassroots activism associated with Hsinchu Science-based Industrial Park (HSIP) and Tainan Science-based Industrial Park (TSIP), the first and the second state-initiated high-tech parks in Taiwan. Circled by the concept of IT industrial dominance, the research analyzes how the power of the IT industry has been constructed, and how such power has crippled current environmental practices and constrained community members from voicing their concerns on the adverse impacts of IT development.; The research concludes that environmental qualities and community sustainability have been threatened by fast expansion of high-tech development. Planning and policies unilaterally promote IT industrial growth while environmental impacts and community values are overridden in such context. IT's less readily perceivable pollution, its accentuated superior images, prevailing economic interests, threat of capital flight, and tech elites's apathy are all factors that constrain environmental mobilization. Moreover, IT domination manifests the legitimacy and advantages of the industry in garnering various forms of social resources, while consequently increasing the resource gap between the industry and grassroots forces in their political, technology, and other social mobilization. However, several grassroots-based environmental initiatives shed lights on environmental and social reforms in Taiwan's high-tech context, as the grassroots groups try to empower themselves through cross-sectoral discussion, community-organized environmental monitoring, transnational exchange, and building community connectedness to seek solutions. Attempting to solve the problems at root in high-tech contexts, the research suggests government agencies, industrial sector, along with NGOs must work collectively to transform the global IT operation.