Department of Urban Development, Taipei City Government

Taipei Guandu Nature Park and Xinsheng Park Area of Taipei Expo Park have won the silver medal of “2012 LivCom Project Awards for Liveable Communities”.
Four places in Taipei City have been chosen as the finalists of the award, and they have attended the Finals held in Al Ain, a city in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Taipei Guandu Nature Park and Xinsheng Park Area of Taipei Expo Park are the two finalists in receiving Project Awards and Baishihu Community in Neihu and Tang-Bu Community in Wanhua are the two finalists in receiving Whole City Awards A category. After three days of PowerPoint slides appraisal, Taipei Guandu Nature Park and Xinsheng Park Area of Taipei Expo Park have been awarded to the silver medal and Baishihu Community in Neihu and Tang-Bu Community in Wanhua have been awarded to the bronze medal.
Shi-Hung Chen, the director of Taipei Guandu Nature Park, said that the silver medal represents the approval to the effort that the park had put in. He also mentioned that the award should also be honored to Wild Bird Federation, Taipei City Hall, volunteers and enterprises such as HSBC; without their help and cooperation, the park would not be recognized by many people. The judges were interested in the operations carried out by the private sectors and the International Outdoor Sculpture Festival.
Ching-Hwa Zhang, the representative of Xinsheng Park Area of Taipei Expo Park, indicated that Xinsheng Park Area focused on respect to the native plant breeding and use of recyclable resources to reduce waste of energy. The judges were concerned about construction techniques such as ways to maintain green roof. The judges were also care about the new operation mode that Xinsheng Park Area of Taipei Expo Park will adopt.
The other two cases have won the bronze medal of “Whole City Awards”, and the common characteristic for these two cases are the vision is fulfilled by the spontaneous operations carried out by the community itself together with the effective executions by the public sectors. Tang-Bu Community has focused on capacity transfer. It enabled the community to preserves the cultural heritages and creates more free spaces. These free spaces became important places for holding community events. The judges were interested in how Tang-Bu Community uses and maintains its historical sites.
Baishihu is a community located in countryside, and it’s facing urbanization problems. The judges have inquired questions like number of community events’ attendants and ways of better water conservation while they were inspecting this case. A point that’s worth to mention is that the head of judges had specially emphasized that Baishihu Community is a community with less than 500 population, yet it has actively promote organic agriculture, and it can be the model for other communities.
Wei-Ren Chen, the leader of Taipei City Delegation for this year, indicated that there are many potential cities that can be chosen as the ideal model of liveable communities, yet due to the time pressure and requirements emphasized by the judges, all of our finalists were not able to get into the first three places. In the future, Taipei City will put in more efforts on keeping up with the rapid changes that occur in the world every day to provide a better living environment. Department of Urban Development Taipei City Government will be holding a press on 2th November at 10am to thoroughly explain the four awarded cases.