Collective Action toward a Sustainable City: Citizens’ Movements and Environmental Politics in Taipei

Abstract

Abstract This chapter presents two stories of community mobilization in Taipei: defending living space and birth of a five-hectare city park, Nos. 14–15 Park. These two vignettes show both the successes and failures of urban environmental activism in Taiwan's capital city, Taipei. It also attempts to discuss the pattern of development to which the protesters were reacting. It then reviews the varieties of community-based environmental activism during the eighties and nineties and its impact on environmental policies. The issue raised by the two vignettes is addressed: the relationship between sustainability and social justice. In the process of struggle, local communities have served as agents of environmental action. The responsiveness of both the national and municipal governments has proven the political efficacy of community action. The idea that the improvement of the urban environment cannot be divorced from the realization of social justice must become a more integral part of movement ideology.