Search

This paper foregrounds the riverfront as a re-territorialising arena of urban governance. Through a long-term study of the Xindian River in Taipei metropolis, Taiwan, we illustrate how the riverfront can be the key locus where the expansion of the urban frontier is manifested through and intertwines with the transformation of nature. While first interwoven with everyday activities of subsistence, Xindian River was gradually turned into the periphery of the city and then green space for recreation, a process actualised through infrastructure aimed at flood control and waste treatment as well as other informal activities that challenge such measures. We propose that 'territorialisation' and 'folding' are notions that can grasp asymmetrical relations embedded in the physical landscape. We argue that a riverfront landscape composed by territorialisation and heterogeneous folding reveals that the emergence of a negotiable state–society relationship is pivotal in the production of the urban riverfront of Taipei. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on resolving a defect of population-based urban sprawl analysis from a land-use planning perspective. This defect is indicated for a few metropolitan areas, which have experienced a controversial phenomenon of population decentralisation but with potential household centralising force. With the emphasis on household movement, this paper first aims to clarify the role of populations, households and employment that characterises urban sprawl and to check if unmet housing demand in city centres can be identified. Second, we evaluate the influence of household distribution factors, such as unmet housing and land-use related factors, on spatial-structure-based compactness/sprawl, taking time lag into consideration. A new classification of urban forms is developed to identify potential residential centripetal market forces. Additionally, the housing demand generation-distribution + push-accessibility-pull (GD+PAP) analysis framework is applied. The results of an empirical study on the Taipei metropolitan area between 1980–1990 and 1990–2000 suggest that the most significant policy towards compactness is high density. We recommend a prioritisation in city centres, particularly when housing demand is underserved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper applies the bounded rationality rule to analyse commuters' mode-switching behaviour from private transport (i.e. automobile and motorbike) to public transport (i.e. rail transit and bus transit) in the Taipei metropolitan area. A stated choice approach was used to collect the data and to investigate how different attributes, such as parking fees, travel time and cost, influence commuters' mode-switching behaviour. A multinomial probit modelling framework was developed to capture the correlation effects when commuters switch from private to public modes. The estimation results indicate that the socioeconomic characteristics and trip characteristics significantly influence commuters' mode-switching behaviour. Accounting for the structure of unobserved effects suggests that switching behaviour from private to public modes was significantly positively correlated. An elasticity analysis shows that private commuters were more likely to switch to MRT than to bus and that auto commuters are generally more likely to switch to public modes than are motorbike commuters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]