From sin city to cine city: Re-peeling of Taipei’s Skin-peeling Alley

The top-down policy of urban regeneration in Taipei has gradually facilitated new paradigms of urban conservation and adaptive reuse in historic areas, regardless of its concomitant consequences of displacement and replacement. The ‘success’ story of reviving the Skin-peeling Alley promoted by the combined effect of cine-tourism and evicting the stigmatized residents has turned the original sin city into an overnight sensation of an old street reborn. The spectacle of the Skin-peeling Alley as a cine city, however, conceals the manipulation of local narratives and the absence of the authentic subjects. The exclusion of bottom-up initiatives and participation signifies a regeneration model which appears only skin-deep after a decade-long regeneration makeover. © 2013 Selection and editorial matter: Michael E. Leary and John McCarthy; individual chapters: the contributors.