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Asian cities have promoted TOD to increase MRT use and decrease private vehicle use. A crucial factor in achieving this goal is improving the pedestrian environment, which can increase people's willingness to walk to MRT stations. This paper analyses how Asian cities have improved the pedestrian environment around MRT stations and the factors influencing walking willingness by reviewing literature and taking Taipei as the empirical area. The results demonstrated that reducing obstacles in pedestrian space, evening the pavement, using transparent window displays in stores along the pavement, and constructing rain shelters can increase people's willingness to walk. The simulations of improved environments can provide references for countries improving the pedestrian environment. The contribution and innovation are to point out the differences in the motivation and goals of TOD in Asian and Western cities and propose improvements to increase people's willingness to walk to achieve TOD's goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Streets are an essential element of cities, and their design has a profound impact on their functionality to the movement of people and their well-being. This paper investigates preferences for and economic values of several street design characteristics, encompassing greenspaces (ground vegetation, trees, flowers), and walking and cycling infrastructure. A discrete choice experiment on a single case study street in Taipei, Taiwan, has revealed positive preferences for ground vegetation (and a willingness to pay—WTP—between $2.8 and $4 per year for a 1% increase in coverage), separated cycling infrastructure (with a WTP between $60 and $100 for cycleways separated from traffic), pedestrian access to road islands (WTP of $55), and the (reduced) amount of space dedicated to motor vehicles (WTP of $29 to avoid any increase). Flowers were also deemed important, but a mixed picture was obtained with respect to preference for street trees. The analysis is exploratory, on a relatively small sample of street users, but contributes to the literature on the importance of urban vegetation and walking and cycling infrastructure when designing streets and be used to draw lessons for other similarly dense urban areas in the country and wider region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A theoretical account of governmentality is developed for a non-western city. • Such account combines with the post-colonial context of policy mobility. • CCB agenda seeks to develop a win-win solution for Taipei's long-standing crises. • A 'regime of truth' is alienated as a 'regime of representation'. • CCB has reproduced a closure of cultural politics and social exclusion. Creative City Building (CCB) agendas have become a global policy trend for re-governing urban decline. Taipei represents a postcolonial and global South city, in which the universal CCB agenda is regarded as a win-win solution for its long-standing crises. This paper shows that the exercise of the CCB agenda in Taipei: a not-so-global/non-western city represents the pursuance of a new governmentality, relative vision and toolkit produced from and embedded in logics of cities in the global North. We point out that research on CCB to-date tends to underplay engagement with debates on governmentality. We provide both theoretical and empirical reflections of the political rationality, specific technologies of governance and related social exclusion in Taipei's practice of CCB agenda. While highlighting the usefulness of the framework of governmentality, we suggest that such a framework has greater explanatory power when complemented by critiques of universal rationality, (post-) colonial governmentality and modernisation. Empirically, we develop a critical illustration of the process and characteristics of transferring universal rationality and agenda of CCB in Taipei's context. Consequently, this paper argues that behind the rhetoric of being inclusive, diverse or tolerant, the practice of CCB in Taipei instead reproduces the closure of cultural production and social exclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) systems are essential in densely populated cities, providing efficient, reliable transportation that alleviates congestion, reduces pollution, and promotes sustainable development. By accommodating large passenger volumes, MRTs enhance urban mobility, economic vitality, and quality of life, making them a vital component of modern urban infrastructure. Identifying key economic, social, environmental, and institutional determinants is crucial for advancing sustainable transportation systems. Integrating technological and strategic perspectives, this paper employs the innovative Rough-Fermatean Fuzzy Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (RFF-DEMATEL) approach to delve into the critical determinants of transportation sustainability in the Taipei Mass Rapid Transit (TMRT). The study acknowledges the interconnections among these factors, leading to a more genuine and precise evaluation, distinct from conventional methods that presuppose factor independence. Research outcomes indicate that "operations and performance" stand out as the paramount factors, underscoring the importance of operational strategies and economic allocation. "Digital technology economy" and "sustainable supply chain management" are also emphasized, pinpointing the necessity to harmonize public welfare with financial sustainability while cultivating enduring partnerships. The proposed approach's thorough categorization offers specific managerial suggestions, assisting TMRT in realizing its sustainability aspirations and aligning with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This investigation accentuates the significance of recognizing factor interdependence and adeptly managing uncertainties, bolstering the research's credibility and applicative worth. • RFF-DEMATEL used to analyze critical determinants of TMRT's transportation sustainability. • "Operations and performance" identified as the most important factors for sustainability. • Evaluation framework integrates economic, social, and environmental aspects. • RFF-DEMATEL acknowledges factor interdependence for accurate importance assessment. • RFF-DEMATEL categorizes criteria using INRM, providing targeted management implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzed 200 travel blog entries posted by 100 Mainland Chinese visitors and 100 local Taiwanese visitors to Taipei, the capital city of The Republic of China. The paper is unique in three ways. First, it provides external and internal perceptions toward a destination; secondly, it combines a Chinese coding system to segment texts and computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software to count keywords frequency; and finally, it visually presents the differences between two groups of bloggers in terms of the importance and affections visitors attached to Taipei in six image dimensions. Managerial implication is further enhanced when visitors' perception is compared with those messages promoted by destination marketing organizations. Overall, both groups of bloggers expressed more positive perceptions toward frequently mentioned image dimensions such as meals, sightseeing, and transportation. Mainland Chinese bloggers mainly saw Taipei through certain frames of reference that were manifested in promotional messages, thus creating a “circle” of representation in blogosphere. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Existing research on outdoor thermal comfort in urban areas focuses on meteorological factors such as temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, and radiation on sunny or cloudy days. However, climate conditions before, during, and after rainfall events can cause changes in meteorological factors in subtropical regions. Rainfall is an atmospheric condition with a large influence on thermal comfort, particularly in subtropical areas with abundant rain. Big data on temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, precipitation, and total cloud cover from the Taipei Weather Station under the Central Weather Administration from June to August each year from 2011 to 2020 were analyzed, dividing the data into categories based on precipitation. Using a k-means clustering algorithm, we quantified the relationships between meteorological factors and apparent temperature as well as physiological equivalent temperature in different rainfall scenarios. The results indicate that rainfall in the summers of subtropical oceanic climates indeed influence outdoor thermal comfort in urban areas: 37.7% of the rainfall weather patterns improved thermal comfort and 62.3% of the rainfall weather patterns reduced thermal comfort. RWP 46 represent the weather conditions that most significantly improve thermal comfort, at 1:00 PM, with a rainfall of 15 mm, there is a decrease in ΔAT by 14.4 ℃ and ΔPET by 22.1 ℃. With the hot, humid, and rainy climate conditions in Taiwan, apparent temperature is the most accurate index of thermal comfort. KEY POLICY HIGHLIGHTS Rainfall events may affect outdoor thermal comfort in subtropical cities. Different rainfall weather patterns have different impacts on urban outdoor thermal environments. 62.3% of rainfall weather patterns resulted in worsened thermal comfort, for low and concentrated rainfall resulting in a stuffier thermal environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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We investigate the dynamic characteristics of Covid-19 daily infection rates in Taiwan during its initial surge period, focusing on 79 districts within the seven largest cities. By employing computational techniques, we extract 18 features from each district-specific curve, transforming unstructured data into structured data. Our analysis reveals distinct patterns of asymmetric growth and decline among the curves. Utilizing theoretical information measurements such as conditional entropy and mutual information, we identify major factors of order-1 and order-2 that influence the peak value and curvature at the peak of the curves, crucial features characterizing the infection rates. Additionally, we examine the impact of geographic and socioeconomic factors on the curves by encoding each of the 79 districts with two binary characteristics: North-vs-South and Urban-vs-Suburban. Furthermore, leveraging this data-driven understanding at the district level, we explore the fine-scale behavioral effects on disease spread by examining the similarity among 96 age-group-specific curves within urban districts of Taipei and suburban districts of New Taipei City, which collectively represent a substantial portion of the nation's population. Our findings highlight the implicit influence of human behaviors related to living, traveling, and working on the dynamics of Covid-19 transmission in Taiwan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As policy and theory travel, comparative urbanism becomes important to address questions concerning if and how gentrification and revanchist urbanism have ‘gone South’, or ‘gone East’. In recent decades, Taipei has experienced a shift in economic base, massive urban renewal, neoliberal reforms and associated social polarisation. In this paper we ask to what extent gentrification and revanchist urbanism are relevant concepts for understanding processes of urban restructuring in this East Asian developmental state capital city. The analysis relates national and urban politics to gentrification of the Yongkang, Qingtian, Wenzhou and Huaguang neighbourhoods in Daan District, Taipei. We investigate manifestations of Atkinson’s four analytical strands of revanchist urbanism in Taipei. We conclude that revanchist urbanism has, to a considerable extent, formed urban development in Taipei during the last quarter century, and that unless democratising forces tame the power of finance and property capital, effectively claiming the right to the city, urban improvements by progressive movements will be valorised by the architects of revanchist urbanism: finance and property capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Forcing pathways between urban surfaces (impervious and pervious pavers) and near-surface air temperature were measured and investigated with a network of multiple sensors. Utilizing field data measured between April 2021 and May 2022, and assuming that the influential variables follow the basic heat-transfer energy-balance equations, multiple regression-based statistical models were built to predict the surface temperature and near-surface air temperature (0.05 m, 0.5 m, 1 m, 2 m, and 3 m) of one impervious paver site and one pervious paver site in Taipei City, Taiwan. Evaporative cooling was found to be more influential on the pervious paver with a statistically significant influence on the microclimate up to 1.8 m (and up to 0.7 m for the impervious paver), using in situ data with an ambient air temperature higher than 24 °C. The surface temperature is mainly affected by solar shortwave radiation and ambient air temperature. As for near-surface air temperature, ambient air temperature is the most influential factor, followed by surface temperature. The importance of surface temperature indicates the influence of upwelling longwave radiation on the microclimate. The predictive equations show that pervious surfaces can help cities with hot and humid climates fight the changing climate in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The distal relationship between Taipei's resource inflows and nonrenewable resource production in Taiwan was investigated. • Cross-scale emergy synthesis revealed the reliance of Taipei's resource inflows on Taiwan. • The demand of construction materials in Taipei's peri-urbanization is the underlying driving force of the development in Taipei's remote areas. Urbanization not only causes environmental changes in metropolitan regions but also influences the ecological and socioeconomic changes of distant land areas due to increasing demands on resource use and waste emissions. Previous studies on the assessment of urban systems have focused on the city or metropolitan areas under study. There is a need to incorporate urban land teleconnections to investigate the relationship between a city and distant land areas during the process of urbanization. This paper analyzes the teleconnection of the energy and material flows associated with Taipei's peri-urbanization and remote areas in Taiwan. The cross-scale emergy synthesis of Taipei and Taiwan was examined first to investigate the relationships of the material and energy flows between Taipei and Taiwan. The exploitation of non-renewable resources in Taiwan during the 1990s was driven mainly by the construction and development taking place in Taipei. Furthermore, compared with Taiwan, the Taipei area relies heavily on external resources. The results of the emergy evaluation of materials flows in Taipei indicated that 85% of the construction materials used were imported from other remote areas during the past 30 years. The use of construction materials in Taipei had a higher intensity in the city center during 1982–1992 and in the peri-urban area during 2002−2014. The results of the emergy synthesis indicated that urban land teleconnections exist between peri-urban areas of Taipei and other distant areas in Taiwan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores the relationships between Taipei's nodal status, strategic planning and mode of governance. A conceptual framework is constructed to illustrate how Taipei's mode of governance sets the context that enables and constrains the city's strategic planning actions and responses for managing globalising forces. The conceptual framework represents a bottom-up approach in contrast to the topdown one prevalent in research on the world-city system. This framework could be used to conduct comparative analyses of other cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we use the SBR/Image method to compute the path loss for different outdoor environments in the commercial area of Taipei. Four types of antenna arrays such as L shape, Y shape, triangular and circular arrays are used in the base station and their corresponding path loss on several routes in the outdoor environment are calculated. Moreover, the genetic algorithm is employed to optimize the excitation voltages and phases for antenna arrays to form proper antenna patterns. The performance in reduction of path loss by the genetic algorithm is investigated for these antenna arrays. By the obtained antenna patterns, we can know the route with the lowest path loss; meanwhile, transmission power using this route in the base station can be reduced. The investigated results can help telecommunication engineers improve their planning and design of microcellular system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In urban areas, public transport can improve sustainable transport by reducing vehicles and congestion, and improving accessibility. Mass rapid transit (MRT) is especially important for large cities, such as Taipei City, Taiwan. In particular, MRT aims to improve mobility and reliability, but has limitations in providing first and last mile accessibility to final destinations or origins. Taipei City, Taiwan has introduced a public bike sharing scheme to service this gap. However, few studies have addressed how a public bike sharing scheme assists first and last mile accessibility. This study uses Taipei City as a case study to investigate this issue by comparing the demand and supply of the public bike sharing scheme, YouBike, at a detailed spatial scale. The supply of YouBike is represented by the time saving compared to walking for each identified origin and destination pair in the study area (i.e., Point of Interests (POIs) and MRT stations). The demand for YouBike is total trips from each YouBike station to a MRT station using public transport smart card data. By comparing the demand and supply for over 400 zones or villages, service gaps and areas of unbalanced service can be identified. The results show that YouBike does provide first and last mile service for the MRT network with some evidence of service mismatch in the study area, i.e., high service for low demand and vice versa. The conclusions of the paper can help cities wanting to introduce a bike sharing schemes to improve first and last mile transport. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highway congestion is a common problem worldwide, and different management strategies have been proposed and implemented. In Taiwan, commuter trips in urban areas tend to use freeways for daily trips. One particular problem in Taiwan is consecutive on-ramps within metropolitan areas, such as Taipei, Taichung, and Kaohsiung. Three to four on-ramps bring more vehicles to the freeways, and coordinating with an integrated ramp control strategy is critical to avoiding congestion in metropolitan areas. Based on the concept of the store-and-forward method, this study proposes a linear optimal control model to optimize integrated on-ramp control strategies. The storeand-forward method is chosen because freeway congestion is usually observed in these areas, and freeway efficiency depends on avoiding queue length. The developed mathematical program can be solved efficiently through mathematical optimization packages. The objective of the formulation is to minimize the total queue length within considered areas. In the Taipei metropolitan area, numerical experiments were conducted based on three consecutive on-ramps, including Yuanshan, Taipei, and Sanchun ramps. Several scenarios were designed to illustrate the possible benefits of the proposed model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern industrial heritage in East Asia shares the social and historical background of industrial and cultural products shaped during the colonial times around the 20th century—a period of political upheaval and rapid social transformation. Gunsan (Korea) and Taipei (Taiwan) share the historical characteristics of modern industrial facilities built during the Japanese colonial period. Moreover, these facilities are controversial and complex objects regarding which the notions of conservation of historical heritage and liquidation of colonial heritage coexist and are subjects of mediating the creation of modern cities in East Asia and transition to creative modern urbanization. The complexity surrounding these modern industrial facilities warrants an in-depth analysis of the methods of utilizing them as cultural heritage sites for cultural mediation, and Gunsan and Taipei are good examples for comparison. Here, we examined cultural urban regeneration utilizing modern industrial facilities formed from similar historical and social backgrounds in Taiwan and Korea. This is a comparative study of historical and cultural belts utilizing industrial buildings in Gunsan's original city centre and Songshan Cultural and Creation Park in Taipei. Finally, we proposed implications for local residents, cultural communities rooted in the region, and user-centered cultural content for sustainable cultural urban regeneration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims. Suicidal acts may cluster in time and space and lead to community concerns about further imitative suicidal episodes. Although suicide clusters have been researched in previous studies, less is known about the clustering of non-fatal suicidal behaviour (self-harm). Furthermore, most previous studies used crude temporal and spatial information, e.g., numbers aggregated by month and residence area, for cluster detection analysis. This study aimed to (i) identify space-time clusters of self-harm and suicide using daily incidence data and exact address and (ii) investigate the characteristics of cluster-related suicidal acts. Methods. Data on emergency department presentations for self-harm and suicide deaths in Taipei City and New Taipei City, Taiwan, were used in this study. In all-age and age-specific analyses, self-harm and suicide clusters were identified using space-time permutation scan statistics. A cut-off of 0.10 for the p value was used to identify possible clusters. Logistic regression was used to investigate the characteristics associated with cluster-related episodes. Results. A total of 5,291 self-harm episodes and 1,406 suicides in Taipei City (2004-2006) and 20,531 self-harm episodes and 2,329 suicides in New Taipei City (2012-2016) were included in the analysis. In the two cities, two self-harm clusters (n [number of self-harm episodes or suicide deaths in the cluster] = 4 and 8 in Taipei City), four suicide clusters (n = 3 in Taipei City and n = 4, 11 and 4 in New Taipei City) and two self-harm and suicide combined clusters (n = 4 in Taipei City and n = 8 in New Taipei City) were identified. Space-time clusters of self-harm, suicide, and self-harm and suicide combined accounted for 0.05%, 0.59%, and 0.08% of the respective groups of suicidal acts. Cluster-related episodes of self-harm and suicide were more likely to be male (adjusted odds ratio [aOR] = 2.22, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.26, 3.89) and young people aged 10-29 years (aOR = 2.72, 95% CI 1.43, 5.21) than their cluster-unrelated counterparts. Conclusions. Space-time clusters of self-harm, suicide, and self-harm and suicide combined accounted for a relatively small proportion of suicidal acts and were associated with some sex/age characteristics. Focusing on suicide deaths alone may underestimate the size of some clusters and/or lead to some clusters being overlooked. Future research could consider combining self-harm and suicide data and use social connection information to investigate possible clusters of suicidal acts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Property-led renewal has become the mainstream approach of entrepreneurial governance but may change the sociospatial pattern of the classical rent gap and cause problems such as neighborhood commodification, overlooked public interest, and uneven development. Considering the extensive application of marketized measures such as the floor-area-bonus and right transformation in Taipei's urban renewal system, we explore the role of the state in rent gap production and the obstacles to realizing sustainable regeneration. The legislative framework indicates that urban renewal in Taipei has prompted growth network among property market, property-led incentive, and stakeholders to exploit the state-induced rent gap. From the micro-level, we select two cases in the old and new districts in Taipei for comparison and find that the sociospatial unevenness has not been balanced but intensified by the property-led renewal since the 2000s. Profit-making has engendered a governing barrier detrimental to implementing sustainable regeneration while distorting the publicity to property appreciation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study evaluated greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from an urban water system in Taiwan using a lifecycle assessment method. The water system of the Taipei region was used as a case study. Both on‐site and off‐site emissions of GHGs were considered. Total GHG emissions from the urban water system were 151,211.3 t CO2‐eq/y in the study period. On‐site GHG emissions from water surfaces and chemical additives contributed 3.1% and 18.3% of total emissions. The reservoir accounted for 1% of total off‐site GHG emissions from electricity consumption; 60.3% was from purification plants and 38.7% from boosting stations. The environmental cost of GHG emissions from the urban water system was calculated as US$0.001 per ton of water, which implies that the water price in Taiwan should be increased to US$0.27/t. This study explored the principle of 'user pays' in water pricing by monetizing the environmental cost of GHG emissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By analysing the discourse and mobilisation of the Qing-tien community in Taipei, this article aims to offer a perspective on how civil society defines urban liveability under a model of neoliberal governance. Caught between the national government (which was eager to sell national lands in the name of economic efficiency) and the local government (which was sensitive to community support), the Qing-tien community organisers collaborated with planning activists to shape the vision and strategies necessary to save their environment. From saving trees for the community, the community successfully built a consensus against the privatisation of public land. Later, the movement managed to preserve old Japanese houses and gardens, and Qing-tien was designated a historic district. The process of community mobilisation in Qing-tien was not only a rediscovery of local/urban history and ecology, but also an exploration of urban liveability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]