Taichung city was created in 1891 out of the blueprint for Taiwan's new and only Provincial Capital city. Evolving from a walled-city of 375 hectares, Taichung was remade into a checkerboard city by the Japanese colonial rulers. Public park and streets as well as schools were introduced and implanted in the Japanese living quarter first and spreaded into Taiwanese older settlements in the outskirts.
Post-war Taichung went through both rebuilding and rapid squatter development at the same time. Cityscape was put aside for the sake of squeezing more space for refugees fleeing from mainland China. As a result, downtown Taichung became a densely populated area with limited public facilities.
Prior to 1975, Taichung was a city of contained urban area and compact development. Rail-station district was the downtown and core area with planning focus such as government buildings, park and school. Since 1986, Taichung's landscape was transformed from compact to sprawling pattern.
Beginning in 2010, the merger of Taichung city and county government not only enlarged the urban boundary but also broke the city into at least ten different planning distrcits, ranging from large and rural settlement patterns. Taichung is no longer a city but a metropilitan with diverse settlement patterns. Implementation of planning ideals is expected to gain a relief after a comprehensive rezoning of public faciliity lands into buildable zones.
From plan to implementation, Taichung's future is more dependent on the proposed circle-line rail system as well as costly rapid transits. Without them, Taichung city wont be realized as a smart and sustainable city at all.
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