The livability of social housing communities in Taiwan: A case study of Taipei City

Abstract

Social housing is a welfare strategy geared to meeting the housing needs of working people and the middle class. Apart from resolving the basic housing problem of disadvantaged members of society, social housing also seeks to provide excellent residential quality, and achieve the goal of livable cities via enhancement of the quality of the urban living environment as a whole through a community-based approach. The goal of this paper is to explore social housing community development strategies for Taipei City, and examine how they can create livable social housing communities. The chief focal points include determination of problems currently faced by social housing communities in Taipei and formulation of development strategies based on livability criteria. After employing literature analysis to gain an understanding of problems cited in the literature and connected with current standards, the integration of livable city assessment items are discussed in the context of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. The publicly-owned idle space consisting of a former Army Maintenance Plant base in Taipei's Xinyi District that can be reused as a social housing community was chosen as the study case, SWOT analysis of the site's internal and external environmental factors and its current state of development were performed, and finally conclusions have been submitted concerning the development needs of livable residential communities and recommendations for Taipei City addressing social housing community development strategies. It is found that current development strategies tend to neglect communities' basic economic loads, and that an appropriate development strategy be constructed on the basis of Taiwan's current "Eco-Community Evaluation System" is recommended by incorporating basic community economic load factors, which will facilitate the sustainability of community management and maintenance.