Taiwan Today

Shirley Kuo, chairwoman of the ROC Council for Economic Planning and Development (CEPD), announced in late November 1990 that the government plans to establish eighteen new communities as part of the six-year development plan initiated earlier in the year by Premier Hau Pei-tsun. According to Kuo, the communities will help Taiwan become a place of “suburbanized cities and urbanized suburbs,” thereby improving the overall quality of life. According to CEPD, which is responsible for drawing up the details of the six-year development plan, each of the communities will be self-sufficient. They will have performing centers, parks, museums, and shopping malls. Industrial sectors and business services will also be included in each community. The goal is for each planned community to provide residents with the best possible food, clothing, housing, education, entertainment, medical services, and transportation facilities. The transportation dimension is one of the most appealing aspects of the planned communities. Commuting to work should take less than half an hour, and travel to the nearest metropolitan area would be only an hour away. Kuo points out that CEPD has already drawn up a rapid transit system proposal to meet these ends. The new communities are part of a larger plan to correct the unbalanced development of Taiwan over the past four decades by establishing new satellite suburban areas and improving the infrastructure in existing towns and cities. Some major goals of the six-year development plan are as follows: ●Work environment—introduce appropriate job opportunities, improve local industrial structure, and locate factories in special areas away from residences. ●Housing—build 300,000 government-funded residences in each planned community and encourage the private sector to build another 600,000 units. ●Recreation—meet the increasing needs of people for leisure activities by building 150 new sports arenas on the island; make sure that each county has its own swimming pool and baseball field, and that each city has public parks; and establish downtown areas with places for recreation as well as art and cultural activities. ●Education—build libraries in each county in coordination with county schools, and upgrade facilities for cultural events and adult education programs. ●Medical network—organize local hospitals and subsidize medical personnel in areas where there is a shortage of professional medical services, and coordinate the medical delivery system with the national health insurance program scheduled to begin in 1994. ●Shopping facilities—establish large shopping centers and modern supermarkets in all major communities. ●Transportation network—build connecting highway systems to all towns with population over 50,000, construct expressway systems to all cities with a population of 100,000 or more, and provide mass rapid transit systems in metropolitan areas with a population over 1 million.