Property-led renewal, state-induced rent gap, and the sociospatial unevenness of sustainable regeneration in Taipei

Property-led renewal has become the mainstream approach of entrepreneurial governance but may change the sociospatial pattern of the classical rent gap and cause problems such as neighborhood commodification, overlooked public interest, and uneven development. Considering the extensive application of marketized measures such as the floor-area-bonus and right transformation in Taipei’s urban renewal system, we explore the role of the state in rent gap production and the obstacles to realizing sustainable regeneration. The legislative framework indicates that urban renewal in Taipei has prompted growth network among property market, property-led incentive, and stakeholders to exploit the state-induced rent gap. From the micro-level, we select two cases in the old and new districts in Taipei for comparison and find that the sociospatial unevenness has not been balanced but intensified by the property-led renewal since the 2000s. Profit-making has engendered a governing barrier detrimental to implementing sustainable regeneration while distorting the publicity to property appreciation.