A Critical Analysis of Culture-led Urban Regeneration Policy in Taipei and beyond Hui-Fang Liu Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Leeds School of Geography June, 2016 The candidate confirms that the work submitted is her own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. The right of Hui-Fang Liu to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. © 2016 The University of Leeds and Hui-Fang Liu Acknowledgements For me, a PhD is more like a circular process of mental creative destruction for reconstruction -- where the world breaks you down and builds you up higher once and again, enabling you to peer into a more panoramic view of the domain of knowledge. I could not have gotten so far without the support and guidance of many individuals. My deepest gratitude To my two brilliant supervisors, Dr. Paul Waley and Dr. Stuart Hodkinson, for valuable advice and guidance in my research and writing, as well as great patience and kindness with me. I have been fortunate enough to work closely with Paul Waley. I looked forward to each supervisory meeting with him, and each email from him for his meticulous reading of my drafts. I always appreciated his knowledgeable constructive feedback and thorough opinions showing me how oddly fun and intellectually gratifying research could be. I have also learned from him the invaluable rigorous attitude of being an academic. With intelligence, agile thinking and reaction, and a sharp eye, Stuart Hodkinson inspired me by numerous ‗how-and-what-and-why‘ questions and encouraged me all the way through. By challenging and questioning, he has led me to discover issues more deeply and from various perspectives. Both of them are the chief engineers of this mental restructuring. To my Research Support Group members, Dr. Robert Vanderbeck and Dr. Louise Waite for their encouraging words and constructive suggestions. To all those diligent, admirable people I met, friends I made, and planning elites I followed in Dihua Street and the city for sharing their time, thoughts, feelings and experiences with me, as well as valuable discussions and advice during my fieldwork. To friends and colleagues from the Urban Regeneration Office and Department of Urban Development, Taipei city government, for warm friendships and timely supports during my fieldwork and over the past four years. To the colleagues I met in School of Geography for helping me in various ways: Mrs. Jacqui Manton, Dr. Sara Gonzalez, Dr. Yanpeng Jiang, Dr. Jing Ma, Dr. Nezihe Başak Ergin, Dr. Ying Nan, and Dr. Holly Schuman. In particular, Mrs. Rachel Homer and Dr. Stephen Clark, for always providing warm support throughout my time at Leeds, including our occasionally sweetie and casual chats. To my postgraduate colleagues – Reynhard Sinaga, Stella Darby, Dr. Federico Venturini and those who share office with me, Karen Mullin, Scott Watson, i Owen King, Shruti Vispute, Changjia Li, Junfan Lin, Rui Yu, for creating a perfect atmosphere for doing research. Asa Roast, and Megan Waugh have helped me by reading part of my drafts and gave constructive feedback. Adriane Esquivel Muelbert and Ana Cabrera Pacheco shared with me the love- hate relationship with research/writing, frustrations, music, meals, yoga and other joys. To friends far and near for believing in me and for sharing with me some delightful moments in their lives, among them Michelle Hui-Ling Chiang, Yu- Shang Lin, Chung-Yun Chen, Jen-Hsien Hsu, David Chu, Angy Chen, Yu-Ping Gu. Special mention goes to Dr. Shu-Shiun Ku and Hui-Yu Kuo for intellectual and psychological support through countless discussions, interesting debates, and most importantly with gourmet and mellow wine. To Jeffery Chu, for always criticising my thoughts and complains in good humour, adding life a fresh flavour. To Taipei city government for the scholarship that made my doctoral journey in Britain possible. To my dearest my parents, Mei-Jao Lin and Fu-So Liu and my best ever sisters and brother, Ya-Hui Liu, Yi-Ling Liu and Cheng-Jie Liu, for their huge love and unwavering faith in me. They did not really know what my research is about but showed great confidence in me and my thesis. To my beloved partner, Cheng-Yu Hsieh, for great understanding and full support which has been my constant source of strength. To all the people who lived and worked in Dihua Street and in Leeds, for inspiring and cultivating this destruction-reconstruction journey. This book is dedicated to them. ii Abstract This thesis critically and empirically investigates Taipei city‘s creative and culture-led urban regeneration policies (CCURP) in recent decades to better understand how creative culture-led urban regeneration policies are generated and fixed into the city‘s local context. This research challenges and complements the existing research on CCURP, policy movements (policy mobilities), and gentrification and adds empirical richness to a body of work which is generally overly theoretical, focused on a small lexicon of places and in most cases lacking in in-depth and systematic empirical examination of the causalities (among policy interventions, social impacts, and influential factors) in diverse contexts and in places ‗off the map‘. A qualitative approach is adopted with an intensive case study of one CCUR policy, the Urban Regeneration Station scheme focusing on Dihua Street but also covering other areas in the city. Based on empirical data derived from in-depth interviews, analysis of documents, and observation, this thesis reveals that local complex, dynamic and yet intertwined issues of political and economic change, active civil society and global knowledge flow explain the emergence of this and other CCURP in Taipei. In concrete, this work addresses the issues of CCURP from three observation points to shed light on their move from elsewhere in the world to Taipei, the factors shaping them in the local context and their social impact on a local community. Firstly, it focuses on policy mobilities closely examining paths, learning schemes and intermediaries. It argues that the city‘s CCURP are highly associated with global knowledge flows and that local planning elites are key actors in knowledge filtering and policy making, thus resulting in an incomplete and uneven learning process. Secondly, through an analysis of from policy objectives, processes, categories and policy discourse, it argues that the URS scheme is a highly localised and contested CCUR policy hiding a less precise and more haphazard executive process. Finally, it argues that CCURP have dominated the city‘s redevelopment direction combining with commercial and aesthetic forces to produce a mixed type of state-led commercial aesthetic gentrification. iii Contents Acknowledgements ...................................................................................... i Abstract ....................................................................................................... iii Contents ...................................................................................................... iv List of Tables ............................................................................................... x List of Figures............................................................................................. xi Preface ...................................................................................................... xiv Chapter 1: Introduction ............................................................................... 1 1.1. Introduction .................................................................................... 1 1.2. Rationale for the study of Creative and Culture-led Urban Regeneration Policies (CCURP) in Taipei ..................................... 3 1.2.1. Knowledge gaps .................................................................. 3 1.2.2. The relevance of CCURP in Taipei ..................................... 5 1.3. Research aims and objectives ....................................................... 7 1.4. Thesis structure ............................................................................ 10 Chapter 2: Mobile culture-led urban policies: review and critique ....... 13 2.1. Introduction .................................................................................. 13 2.2. Culture-led urban regeneration as a mobile urban policy ............. 13 2.2.1. The nature and reasons for lesson drawing and policy transfer ................................................................................ 14 2.2.2. From ‗policy transfer‘ to ‗policy mobilities‘ ......................... 15 2.3. Culture-led urban regeneration .................................................... 18 2.3.1. Antecedents of culture-led urbanism ................................. 19 2.3.2. Defining culture-led regeneration ...................................... 20 2.4. The role that culture-led regeneration policy plays in urban development ................................................................................ 23 2.4.1. Culture as social and symbolic instrument for re-imaging and re-vitalising ................................................................... 24 2.4.2. Culture as an economic tool