ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the dynamics behind the changing regimes of urban renewal in Taiwan. Instead of acting in the spirit of urban managerialism and welfare statism, the authoritarian developmentalist Taiwanese state shouldered the job of evicting squatters and implementing urban renewal policies aimed at promoting urban development. The evolution of urban renewal policy, from a physical infrastructure project in the 1980s to a profitable business model in the early 2000s, reflects the state’s transformation of urban intervention. The successive waves of urban renewal in Taipei City demonstrate the changing state-society relations. It finds that Taiwan’s urban renewal policies have evolved through state-led slum clearance to developer-led promoting property-value, and have led to social and spatial injustice in Taiwan’s cities.
