Toward an Urban Frontier and the Inter-Linkage: The Taipei Scenario

The hybridization or cross breeding of the regional spatial transformation creates an urban frontier that expresses the tectonic shifts focusing on urban activities change and population migration. The scalar shift that spans across the regional scale brings what lacks within the inter-linkage of "city" and "world" and look beyond the territorial division at large. In Taiwan, the phenomenon of geographic concentration of specific sector and economic activity in the metropolitan areas imply the underlying characteristic expounded beneath that can be utilized. Size and growth rate of urbanization thru the population concentration highlights the presence of an intense redistribution, creating a frontier land in need of inter liking of a sort. Other spatial paradigms such as networks or nodes may provide unconventional texture and visualizations of this mega-region, which we can develop into a scalable set of strategies that allocate more localized considered operations to emerge. Using industry gross national product data, this paper presents empirical evidence on the relative spatial specialization and linkage within Taipei metropolitan and the urban system. The econometric results indicate that high return in certain two digit service industries cluster around a monocentric core in the north, a fact so familiar to Taipei. The negative effects of isolation are magnified in locations with higher potential in other uses. The low return of other activities responds primarily to local demand displaying no significant spatial variation. The empirical results highlight the need for improved connectivity between the northern and other regions in Taiwan and the need to address two major issues--the need re-examine the management policy for land and industry development and the need to provide the suitable public facilities and services for the changing population structure. Within this realm, we inquire the urban-landscape hybrids that will behave as a protector to preserve the ecologies and natural resources of the frontier as well as furthering the inter-linkage of the urban landscape. As this may become an ordering principle for a new economy, one must accept the new mechanism for organizing the patterns of human settlement as well as the economies of production and distribution. This paper contends the Taiwan experience provides a model for other developing cities and provides a reference in understanding the parameters and management policies.