Crisis and Dysfunction of Spatial Development and Management in Taiwan

Based upon the development of export-oriented industrialization (EOI), Taiwan has undergone a well-known economic miracle, especially since the 1960s when the capitalist world entered a deep Fordist crisis. Nevertheless, the EOI development was imbued with development contradictions, and caused crisis and dysfunction in Taiwan's spatial development and management. The author aims to analyze this crisis and dysfunction from political-economic perspectives, by discerning how the state intervened in spatial development and management along with the development of EOI. As the author demonstrates, the state manipulates the crisis and dysfunction of the planning mechanism to satisfy the political-economic requirements of Taiwan's EOI development. EOI development provided good environments for capital accumulation, but led to poor living conditions. The environmental results have brought Taiwan much wider political, social, and economic tensions, and have made increasingly unlikely the possibility of constructing a social coalition of sustainable development. The author contends that it is time for Taiwan to reorganise the development of EOI before the current crisis becomes destructive.