Residents in New Taipei City’s (新北市) Linkou District (林口) started a petition yesterday in protest over a plan to turn a park into the athletes’ village for the 2017 Summer Universiade, saying that the proposal would damage their quality of life as well as the local ecosystem.
The plan would build dormitories to house the athletes competing in the Games on the land where the Linkou Sports Park now sits.
Last month, Construction and Planning Agency (CPA) director-general Yeh Shih-wen (葉世文) told a legislative meeting that after the Games, the athletes’ village would be turned into welfare housing units.
The Taipei City Government, which won the right to host the Summer Universiade in December last year, said it decided to use the Linkou park after discussions with the New Taipei City Government, the Sports Affairs Council and the CPA.
However, an official from the Ministry of the Interior, which oversees the CPA, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the ministry was opposed to building the athletes’ village on the site, because “it would be difficult to turn it into welfare housing units later, since designs for the two are fundamentally different.”
Linkou residents were shocked to learn of the proposal.
“The government wants to turn the park into the athletes’ village and then welfare housing units, but they never consulted us,” said Hsu Chu-feng (許主峰), a Linkou resident and chairman of the local Love for Our Hometown Association. “This decision would not only deprive us of our leisure space, it would also destroy the local ecosystem.”
Hsu said the plan for the athletes’ village would use not only the land from the Linkou Sports Park, but also forested land that is on the other side of the road.
“First, the Taipei City Government demolished the homes of [a family surnamed] Wang (王) in Shilin [District (士林)]. Now it’s trying to getting its hands on our park,” he said. “We’re considering staging a protest outside [Taipei Mayor] Hau Lung-bin’s (郝龍斌) residence.”
Linkou Community College issued a statement opposing the plan to build “temporary” housing units for the athletes and urged the government to maintain the integrity of Linkou’s ecosystem.
The community college and Hsu’s association initiated the petition on whether the park should be turned into the athletes’ village.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Wu Yu-sheng (吳育昇), whose electoral district includes Linkou, also objected to the plan.
“The park is a ‘lung’ for Linkou residents,” he said. “Would Taipei City residents agree to it if the city government planned to turn Da-an Forest Park into an athletes’ village?”
Responding to the criticism, CPA deputy director-general Hsu Wen-lung (許文龍) said the land had already been designated for a welfare housing project and the sports park was only a temporary facility.
“We never planned to [officially] turn the site into a permanent park,” he said.
An undersea cable to Penghu County has been severed, the Ministry of Digital Affairs said today, with a Chinese-funded ship suspected of being responsible. It comes just a month after a Chinese ship was suspected of severing an undersea cable north of Keelung Harbor. The National Communications and Cyber Security Center received a report at 3:03am today from Chunghwa Telecom that the No. 3 cable from Taiwan to Penghu was severed 14.7km off the coast of Tainan, the Ministry of Digital Affairs said. The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) upon receiving a report from Chunghwa Telecom began to monitor the Togolese-flagged Hong Tai (宏泰)
A cat named Mikan (蜜柑) has brought in revenue of more than NT$10 million (US$305,390) for the Kaohsiung MRT last year. Mikan, born on April 4, 2020, was a stray cat before being adopted by personnel of Kaohsiung MRT’s Ciaotou Sugar Refinery Station. Mikan was named after a Japanese term for mandarin orange due to his color and because he looks like an orange when curled up. He was named “station master” of Ciaotou Sugar Refinery Station in September 2020, and has since become famous. With Kaohsiung MRT’s branding, along with the release of a set of cultural and creative products, station master Mikan
RISING TOURISM: A survey showed that tourist visits increased by 35 percent last year, while newly created attractions contributed almost half of the growth Changhua County’s Lukang Old Street (鹿港老街) and its surrounding historical area clinched first place among Taiwan’s most successful tourist attractions last year, while no location in eastern Taiwan achieved a spot in the top 20 list, the Tourism Administration said. The listing was created by the Tourism Administration’s Forward-looking Tourism Policy Research office. Last year, the Lukang Old Street and its surrounding area had 17.3 million visitors, more than the 16 million visitors for the Wenhua Road Night Market (文化路夜市) in Chiayi City and 14.5 million visitors at Tainan’s Anping (安平) historical area, it said. The Taipei 101 skyscraper and its environs —
Taiwan on Friday said a New Zealand hamburger restaurant has apologized for a racist remark to a Taiwanese customer after reports that it had first apologized to China sparked outrage in Taiwan. An image posted on Threads by a Taiwanese who ate at Fergburger in Queenstown showed that their receipt dated Sunday last week included the words “Ching Chang,” a racial slur. The Chinese Consulate-General in Christchurch in a statement on Thursday said it had received and accepted an apology from the restaurant over the incident. The comment triggered an online furor among Taiwanese who saw it as an insult to the
RSS