county/city regional plans jointly constituting the national spatial plan:

The national spatial plan bill has been not being passed for decades primarily for such political reasons as rigid land use control over vast land in the rural areas, which occupies over 80 percent of the surface of Taiwan. Consequently, the bill has been facing obstacles in the paramount, i.e., the Legislative Yuan, in Taiwan. As an alternative to get around this serious issue, particularly the spatially environment sustainable plans, the new

county/county regional plans have been adopted to embed the fundamentals and spirit of the national plan, which may not be as complete as national plans, but, as a whole, can be regarded as version zero of the national spatial plan of Taiwan.

The whole area within a first-tier municipality being planned/developed by entity itself-Local autonomy:

The contents of the new county/city regional plan improve the existing plans due to a complete spatial area in a number of aspects. First, for the first time, the municipalities of highest level have the mandate to develop their own spatial plan for the whole territory. The existing system of cross-county regional plans, as a comparison, are policy-oriented as a nature of such a large-scale plan, which is not suitable to provide a blue-print plans, possibly necessary for certain occasions. Second, the existing cross-county regions plans were developed “out-siders,” that is the central government, who logically, practically, and truly are not familiar with the county or city, as the mayors, and local planners. As a result, the cross-county regional plans can only scratch the skin but cannot serves the true local needs. Furthermore, the new county/city plans, for the first time, are mandated to plan for the rural areas, which in this country used to comply with the existing land use, rather than a plan. The new regional plan are mandated to plan for all urban areas as a whole, and the surrounding rural areas, which requires the municipality to plan more complete in terms of longer period of plan, more complete sectors as a whole from the local eyesight. This progress corrects the old non-mandated county regional plan, which used to be biased into development-oriented, with less attentions to what the mayors are less attentive to due to the political concerns. This local developed, enforced, managed plan is like customized and hence superior in terms of serving its needs, with better feasibility, with better

right-and-responsibility structure, reflecting the spirits of self-autonomy.

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Clear spatial guidelines for public projects and private investment:

The new county/city regional plan provides clear land use vision within the

county/city boundary showing on the map, though at small scale, i.e., 10,000 to 1. These spatial guidelines are significant in directing spatial development for both public and private development through both where all types of developable land are preferred or located, and where are prohibited or without the possibility of being issued development right permission in the rural areas, such as environmentally sensitive areas. In this way, both public projects and private investment have clear and strong spatial guidance, and hence misguidance on spatial investment can largely be avoided, and the investment process can be expedited. Under the clearer county-wide blue-print guidance, all the urban plans can be revised or newly developed, with a better overall vision to follow. Any spatial plans of other non-spatial-planning sectors, such as transportation, entertainment, can also benefit from it by the same token. As a result, the future development will most occur at the designated location, other than some special cases with special permissions, and urban and rural forms will be developed in a more compact form, rather than current form without vision in the rural areas.

Blue-printed county/city regional plan when necessary and possible:

The existing cross-county regional plans only provide vision graphics without detailed blue-print possibly because its spatial scope is too large to do so. Blue print is significant in providing clearer spatial guidance for both private investment and public projects to avoid misguided investment or plans. So, the current version of county/city regional plans has been advised to provide blue print at a reason spatial scale. For conditions that blue print is impossible, policy-oriented displayed in words are applied.

Full-scale adoption of growth management in city/county regional plan leading to a nationwide application:

Some of the growth management measures have been applied in the urban area through planned population size. It is not until the new county/city regional plans that full-scale application of growth management is applied at both urban and rural areas, covering the whole country. The measures applied include, first incorporation of

environmental capacity cap, such as water, electricity supply into each of county/city region plan; also with the population and employment forecast, i.e., the future fundamental

demand, the capacity cap and demand forecast jointly contribute to the planned population size with growth management essence. Secondly, urban growth boundaries for all urban plans are developed. Thirdly, the development priority to cope with future needs are

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developed into four phases with infill development as first priority, followed by the agricultural parcels with urban areas, expansion of urban areas, and finally the designated rural areas. The expansion of urban areas is only permitted when the used urban area has reached %.

With the growth management measures, the frequent, inappropriate urban sprawl via expansion of urban areas, in many cases, can be mitigated to certain degree. Ironically, some serious urban sprawl phenomenon is systematically caused by the mayors or local councilors. For example, a new aero-polis new town called Taoyuan aero-polis, has been promoted by the central and local government, which however causes not only urban sprawling issues since many surrounding urban areas still have vacant land for further development but also societal conflicts since, for example, many villages have been forced to move without fully justified reasons. This type of inappropriate development needs to be scrutinized in great detail with long-term development of the area as the context.

Full-scale nationwide protection of environmentally sensitive land:

Even though environmentally sensitive land in many aspects, including geological, biological, cultural fields, has long being protected one way or another, many grey areas exist. This new county/city regional plan is ambitious in enforcing full scale protection of environmentally sensitive land, in particular those with all kind of barriers that have been left behind or avoided. As a matter of fact, this is actually the emphasis that initiates this new regional plan. What have been incorporated include protection of first-grade (most suitable) agricultural land from being converted into developed land use, protection of watershed for collecting drinking water, reservation of territory for more than ten indigenous peoples, and some specific geologically sensitive areas that have been developed for agriculture and recreation. It is not that they were not paid attention to, or lack of law to protect, but due to long-time historical facts, quality of people, bureau, political pressure from interest groups, conflicts of laws, conflicts among agencies, such as drinking water protection and recreational development to boost local economy, lack of accurate spatial data, lack of budget to compensate loss of land owners among others.

These issues may exist for both urban and rural areas.

A formation of platform for coordination between interest groups for resolving conflicts and coordination for use of land:

For the urban and rural planning made possible by the county/city regional plan, a platform for coordination is formed since various meetings at different phases of the planning, reviewing process are required to hold. In which various stakeholders have the

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opportunities to sit together to express, exchange, and discuss their opinions under the same roof, on the one hand. On the other hand, issues of concern sooner or later along the

process are likely to be brought up and discussed, and resolutions are attempted to be developed to reach consensus. The coordination can occur among government, non-governmental organization (NGO), the general public, and exports or scholars, between central government and local governments, and between agencies of the

county/city government. The type of coordination mostly involves conflict of use of land among stakeholders, and cooperation between stakeholders for use of land.

Shifting role of land use management into land use planning in the rural area, jointly with urban areas:

In the past, the counties or cities are not required to develop an overall plan for the rural areas, and hence they simply manage rural land use basically according to what had been there and with the decision power on issuing permission for development right. Only those aggressive mayors develop county/city comprehensive plan during their elective term, which however usually are mandated hence their planning foundation are suspected since their normally reflect what the mayors what to do, not based on a complete process soliciting opinions from all possible stakeholders, among others. Hence, they are likely to be dropped when their term is over. The new county/city regional plan shifts the role of the county/city government from land use management only into also involving a complete future vision, blue prints wherever possible and necessary, and action plans. With the spatial guidance, the land use management tasks have directions to follow, rather than the existing disintegrated relationship among land uses, and city plans within the county/city territory.

Public understanding, involvement, and participation in county/city, particularly rural area, regional planning being possible now:

Other than the county/city mayors, planners, committee, some invited exports and scholars and other some very limited number of related persons, there is few persons or groups that have the opportunities to be part of the county/city related plans if there is any, or even worse there is none for many counties/cities. With the current, new county/city regional plans, it is mandatory for the agency in charge of county/city regional plan to provides all related meeting information, minutes, reports, public hearing and like, and auditing rights into review process to the public. In this way, at the very least, the general public, NGO, council members, and whoever interested, have the channels and

opportunities to understand, participate in the plans at all phases, such as opinions

collection, planning, evaluation processes. Or it could be even better planners could involve

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whom they deem beneficiary to the plan in developing the plan to best serve the real needs from all possible stakeholders. The quality of the plan is very likely elevated in this way in terms what the society and environment needs, how they need, and to what extent they need, and to avoid or minimize mistakes that could be made.

What are the challenges?

Lack of sufficient “carrots” and “sticks” to implement the new county/city regional plan:

One significant issue that fundamentally affects the progress of the new county/city regional plans is the municipalities and developers are not provided with incentives to expedite the process, nor is the existence of punishment system when they are behind. This is particularly true since the constraints-related policies are the primary objectives, such as growth management and protection of environmentally sensitive land preventing more developable land and hence reducing tax revenues, stimulating political pressures from pro-development stakeholders. The situation is worsened since tons of new, extra, long-term tasks for planning, negotiation, and legalization have been created for the

planning related civil servants. One case regarding the incentive for the planning bureau of municipality is the expedition in the legal process for legalization of new or expanding urban plans can make significant time saving; nonetheless, the so called

“development-oriented land,” a special type of land use in the rural areas, designated for future development in the plan where permission for development can be granted in a shorter period of time, actually can only save about one month for developers which is suspected unattractive incentive.

Concern about elevated housing prices due to growth management due to less developable land; Developing, adjusting policies of the central government cause staggering response in the municipality:

The current the county/city regional plan is the first version wherein some policies of them can be adjusted in the future since this is the first try in the country. Inevitably, many municipalities are in the circumstance of wait and see.

Pressure from counties/cities to raise planned population size to set higher amount of developable land:

One fundamental tool of growth management is set a population, employment, or tourist cap based on the supply constraints and growth forecast, based on which the amount

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of developable land of all kinds are calculated accordingly. Population or employment cap hence is aggressively challenged by the municipality to set up higher gap, or on the contrast, softly and implicitly challenged by them with the similar request. The demand for higher population, employment, or tourist cap largely is due to the enlarging the tax base, with which counties or cities can provide more services and constructions for general public and entrepreneurs, affecting their next election either for individual or the party. The wake of the pressure is massive since the civil servants are facing the elected mayors, representing their electors. This totally endangers the success of growth management. As a result, urban sprawl may occur or worsen due to system per se if the cap is overset; that is the growth management is challenged by the government itself.

The geographic information data on fundamental environmentally sensitive land being incomplete, inaccurate, inaccurate for come layers:

The underlying support for planning for environmentally sensitive land is great deal of geological, biological, cultural data shown on GIS layers with necessary details. These data have been developed by the governments since the 1990s in Taiwan, however, it is still in the process and needs some more time to have a more complete data set, whose accuracy level and errors are acceptable.

Conclusions and Policy Implications

The preliminary research results show, first, growth management related policies have been widely implemented and expected to have effective impact, including incorporating resources capacity to determine maximum population for the city region as a whole, developing overall vision of urban growth boundary for all the whole city region, prioritizing infill development, and use of architectural land within urbanized area over rural area to cope with urban growth. Secondly, planning-oriented zoning is adopted in urban areas, while demand-oriented planning permission is applied in the rural areas with designated plans. Then, public participation has been evolved to the next level to oversee all of government’s planning and review processes due to the decreasing trust in the government, and development of public forum on the internet etc. Next, fertile agricultural land is preserved to maintain food self-supplied goal for national security concern. More adoption-based methods than mitigation-based methods have been applied to cope with global climate change. Finally, better land use and transportation planning in terms of avoiding developing rail transit stations and corridor in rural area is promoted.

Even though many promising, prompt measures have been adopted, however, challenges exist to surround: first, overall urban density, likely affecting success of UGB,

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or use of rural agricultural land, has not been incorporated, possibly due to implementation difficulties. Second, land-use related measures to mitigating climate change seem less clear and hence less employed. Smart decline has not drawn enough attention to cope with predicted population decrease in the next decade. Then, some reluctance from county’s government to implement county regional plan can be observed vaguely possibly since limits have be set on further development on agricultural land and sensitive areas. Finally, resolving issue on existing illegal factories on agricultural land remains the most

challenging dilemma.

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