A Greenwashing City: Exploring the Social Construction of City Nature through the ‘Beautiful Taipei’ Programs in Taipei
Date Issued
2012
Date
2012
Author(s)
Chen, Ying-Hsiu
Abstract
In the process of urbanization of nature, the existing types and value of nature are often determined by the development status and social requirements of cities. For the coming of 2010 Taipei International Flora Exposition, the Taipei City Government had promulgated policies to support the urban landscape renovation project - ‘Beautiful Taipei’ programs. The second program, named ‘Reducing the Dilapidated Buildings for Urban Environment Renewal,’ provides floor-to-area ratio (FAR) bonus as an incentive for temporary green open spaces in the city. The widespread urban green landscapes in this typology have drawn massive attention and provoked discussion over producing greening and open spaces inside city, especially in a context where urban renewal and urban regeneration have become crucial development issues for Taipei, a metropolis long lacking sufficient urban open spaces.
‘Greening as Beautification’ has always been regarded as an important method in environmental governance for a city. However, this study found that advocating urban renewal and creating a green urban image had already become an important mechanism for governing Taipei. The ‘greening as beautification’ strategy advocated by the second program of ‘Beautiful Taipei’ has manipulated nature’s aesthetic value in the landscape realm and been mis-related to ecological benefits – so as to convey the political purposes for urban marketing. Furthermore, policies such as building archive and FAR bonus had included the production of ‘green (spaces)’ in urban renewal agenda, imposing a real-estate identity on nature, and the exchange value of nature has been therefore tagged with an exact price. As for the third sector, it on the one hand debates over whether to compromise with such temporary, unrooted nature and to use FAR bonus as incentives for production of nature and, on the other hand, attempts by alternative producing strategies of green (spaces) to reestablish man-land relationships together with community building.
The increased scarcity of and demand on ‘green (spaces)’ in contemporary urban development have revealed the contested green space under the name of urban development in a capital-oriented society. While different actors contesting over interpretation and appropriation of green, they stimulate the development of urban physical environment by either temporality, mobility, community scale, incorporating profitable land developments, or the rudimentary ‘green’ community building. Being influenced by this development in the urbanized nature, ‘green’ also gains significance and is further shaped to satisfy purposes of urban marketing and urban renewal. Consequently, in the name of greening, the actors involved in urban governance have camouflaged and facilitated the actual urban development and resulted in the issues of greenwashing.
Subjects
nature
greenwash
urban regeneration
urban renewal
city marketing
‘Beautiful Taipei’ programs
2010 Taipei International Flora Exposition
SDGs
Type
thesis
File(s)![Thumbnail Image]()
Loading...
Name
ntu-101-R98228008-1.pdf
Size
23.54 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum
(MD5):f255cc3ac0486ce77d33e5a1df684ba3