Taipei Park: Signs of Occupation

Abstract

This essay investigates the configuration of public space in Taipei City using the example of a small urban park. In particular, this essay considers how that space functioned and functions as a site for “occupation”—that is, when and how the public space was produced by, brought under the control of, or performed in by a specific cultural agent, whether a colonial government or skateboarder. Those occupations delineate and transform the space for purposes ranging from the official, macro, and long-lived to the subversive, partial. and fleeting. The park is a shifting pastiche of different moments of occupation, diachronically and contemporaneously layered, existing in a tissue of accommodation and anxiety. The primary focus here is the evolution of the park in the urban plans of the early Japanese colonial government; however, comparisons to both the pre- and postcolonial periods are made, and the contemporary conditions of the park are considered as well.