Reconstructing spatial narratives as a mode of action research and planning – Dialogical community actions of urban regeneration in the neighborhoods of Ka-la̍k-á, Taipei

Abstract

Urban regeneration has presented new opportunities and alternative routes of development for historical and marginalized communities in Taipei, while strategically avoiding wholesale renewal demolition of existing urban fabrics. Yet the neo-liberalist mode of regeneration meets local challenges of sustaining place identity and social inclusion in the declining but lively neighborhoods of Ka-la̍k-á, and the bottom-up initiatives, facilitated by the collaboration of academic practicum, planners in residency, and local residents and activists, adopt different tactics of narrative operations to reinstate Ka-la̍k-á’s identity grounded on its agricultural past and everyday-life stories of the community. From launching experimental filmic narratives to reiterating the narrative routes and reprogramming narrative spaces of the local, the action research of reconstructing narratives is regarded as the cornerstone of dialogical community planning to counterbalance the impending top–down implementation of urban renewal or regeneration projects. The premeditated methodology can also be applied as a dialogical tool for participatory planning and as spatial reconfiguration of social relations and community networks.