ABSTRACT
In 2014, a new municipal programme called ‘Open Green Matching Fund’ was developed by the Taipei City Urban Regeneration Office to support community placemaking and building of social networks and relationships as an alternative approach towards urban regeneration that traditionally focuses on physical improvement and renewal. Through this programme, residents and different social groups have been encouraged to develop projects focusing on a wide variety of issues in as many kinds of urban spaces. With the support of the programme, different types of public, private or semi-public spaces have been rediscovered and transformed into community gathering places. Initiated and developed by residents and non-residents alike, the spaces have fostered new imaginations of communities and public spaces in the city. Through these projects, new social ties and networks have also been developed across pre-existing spatial and social boundaries.
Based on a firsthand account of the programme, this chapter examines the context in which the Open Green Matching Fund programme has emerged, how it works, and how the programme facilitates the making of alternative public spaces and social networks.
Although the concept of ‘social cohesion’ was never used in this project, the ongoing outcomes in Taipei offer lessons in terms of fostering social ties and relationships in the context of growing mobility and diversity that has been experienced elsewhere.
