Studies Of Participatory Planning Experience In Taiwan

In the first part of this paper, the author introduced the Participatory Planning byreviewing the development and criticism of the Traditional Procedural Planning. In Taiwan,the Participatory Planning that derived from the same background had been through acontinuous practice in the last few decades and had accumulated many experiences in bothpositive and negative way, which leads to the research question of this paper.The second chapter of this paper is a literature review and analysis of previousresearches. The previous studies indicate that the participatory planning will lead to a goodsocial effect and became a promotional factor for this planning method; On the contrary, itmay also trigger a negative crisis if any inappropriate involvement occurs during the planningprocess. The third chapter reviews the development of the participatory planning in Taiwan,and points out that although the Community development has flourished since the governmentadopted the “community empowerment” policy in the last two decades, Taiwan is also facingthe crisis and challenges of inappropriate involvement in the participatory planning practice.All of these studies point to the core purpose of this research–to seek for a solution inavoiding inappropriate involvements during the participatory planning process and regain apositive social effect.To this end, this thesis examined three positive cases of Taiwan–the participatoryplanning of Houzhuwei Park, the hangar preservation of in Yilan, and the urban settlementpreservation of Treasure Hill–in which the participatory planning has been well developed.Although the historical conditions and planning process are different from each case, all threecases share the similarity in the value preference, which implies a solution in avoiding theinappropriate involvement and seeking for a positive social effect in participatory planning.In the conclusion, it points out that participatory planning is emerged in a certain periodand supported by some space policies in a "participation” background. However, to urbanplanners, the “participation” in this thesis is not merely to hold planning presentations, toadvise or vote for plans, nor to send the questionnaire, but rather to embrace all demands form participants with an open mind, to offer professional opinion and to balance the interests fromdifferent stakeholders during the planning process.Meanwhile, to all participants, they are not just participating a planning project, but alsoshare the concerns of their life and living style. A "Good" participatory planning does nothave a fixed method. We need to figure out the resident’s key concerns, and infuse theparticipation into residents’ daily life with various activities and methods. In this way, theresidents’spatial practice will shows its effects through the space production process, andenhance the sense of identity with the results. This process will bridge the gaps between theprofessional knowledge and indigenous knowledge on one hand;, and the participants canfeel the individual value of themselves and may thought that they have the ability and rightto participate, which results in the materialization of the subjectivity of human beings.Because of the differences of institutions between these two regions, China could neverindiscriminately imitate the cases from Taiwan. However, the same cultural traditionbetween China and Taiwan offers a great opportunity for adapting the Taiwan participatoryexperiences in Chinese context in future, when the social, cultural, urban policy and nationalconsciousness were to be well developed.Finally, the author goes back to the discussion on the space of epistemology, thendiscriminate the participatory planning from the traditional procedural planning.. Thedifferences in the space of epistemology trigger the differences of the methodology inplanning practice, which provoke some inevasible inappropriate involvements in thetraditional procedural planning and some participatory planning process. Therefore, this studyallows us to propose a new perspective on the issues of participatory planning, that we are notmerely to understand the way we do the planning, but rather to understand the value orientationbehind this. As a participant, shall we make efforts in maintaining social stability and affects thepolicy making, or in tackling social structural problems and seeking for a reform, is still leave asan open-ended questions for every reader and urban planner.