The Political Economy of the Idle or Underutilized Public Facilities
Date Issued
2012
Date
2012
Author(s)
Hsu, Shou-Kuo
Abstract
At the end of 2011, the Public Construction Commission had listed 163 public facilities that had been idle or underutilized in the past 20 years. They are divided into parking facilities, cultural museums, and stadiums, etc. (According to the purposes of the facilities). Parking facilities take up most of the cases (46 cases, 28.2% of total cases). And the next is cultural museums (25 cases, 15.3% of total cases), including local cultural museums and indigenous museums. The last is sports stadiums (12 cases, 7.4% among all).
This study adopts a historical structure approach, which discusses the influences of democratization on public facilities, projects for public infrastructure and policies in balancing the differences between cities and countryside that are related to idle and underutilized facilities, and cause-effect relationships between government subsidies and budget-related regulations from the perspectives of political-economics and the evolution of social environment. This study explores the incubation, formation, and operation of relevant policies of those important public infrastructures, and the changing historical context as well as structure, in the light of the majority of the abovementioned public facilities or the six major types that are specific and representative, such as the indigenous museums, Hakka cultural museums, local cultural museums, extreme sports stadiums, public parking lots, and waste incinerators. The purpose is to have a more comprehensive and complete understanding about the idle and underutilized public facilities; furthermore, to propose review agenda and recommendations for improvement in the future.
According to the result of this study, we came up with the following recommendations:
1.Subsidies for public infrastructure projects granted to the local governments should not be in accordance with administrative areas with a uniform and equal approach.
2.The local governments should be required to bear parts of the coordination funds for public infrastructure projects.
3.Strengthen policies on taking care of disadvantaged groups and shortening the gaps between cities and countryside.
4.Auditing bodies should add an early warning service to strengthen the forecasting function of asset audit.
5.Vitalize idle public facilities in order to effectively use national resources.
6.Others such as strengthening the functions of e-government so that information can be posted on the government websites publicly in order to encourage civilians’ participation, strengthening the training of civil servants on their professional skills in planning and auditing, and so on.
Subjects
INDIGENOUS MUSEUMS
HAKKA CULTURAL MUSEUMS
LOCAL CULTURAL MUSEUMS
EXTREME SPORTS STADIUMS
PUBLIC PARKING LOTS
WASTE INCINERATORS
Type
thesis
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