Hsinchu Technopolis: A Sociotechnical Imaginary of Modernity in Taiwan?
Journal
Critical Sociology
Journal Volume
44
Journal Issue
3
Pages
487-501
Date Issued
2018
Author(s)
Abstract
The Hsinchu Science-based Industrial Park (HSIP) – a special zone established by the Taiwanese government to attract overseas talented engineers back to Taiwan – has been referred to as ‘a Silicon Valley of the East’. As a dreamscape of Taiwan’s modernity, the HSIP aimed to exhibit futuristic ways of organizing employment and living a modern lifestyle. However, the success of the HSIP has created and deepened social and urban contradictions with its neighboring, mostly rural, areas. The government subsequently proposed the Hsinchu Science City (HSC) plan and the Unpolished Jade Project (UJP) to ‘harmonize’ the contradictions between these areas. Consequently, it led the HSIP to turn from an industrial enclave to an urban megaproject, or zone-city. The zone-city has shaped fantasies of modernity in the local people and inspired in them a will to improve. At the same time, it has raised suspicions of land grabbing and dispossession. This article argues that the production of space through zone-cities, an urban form that has been phenomenal in the East Asian context, revolves around a dialectic between the desire for regional improvement and the greed of land speculation. The inherent tension between both sides of this dialectic thus poses an ethical and practical challenge for critical approaches in urban studies. © 2017, © The Author(s) 2017.
Subjects
desiring subject; modernity; speculative urbanization; Taiwan; zone-city
Type
journal article