Resident participation in the government-led urban renewal of reconstructing public housing: The case of the third Siwan Village resettled tenement, Taipei

The trend of addressing the challenge of aging city and providing more social housing is intersecting with the Government-led Urban Renewal policy in Taipei, Taiwan. The reconstruction of dilapidated public housing through the Government-led Urban Renewal is a representation of the trend, which is expected to improve the living environment of the original resident and release more public housing units. Meanwhile, the value of community development established to enhance democracy pays attention to resident participation in neighborhood affairs. In terms of housing outcome, the current discourse about social housing mainly focuses on affordability and numbers of units provided, lacking the institutional consideration of housing needs and how potential inhabitants access to social housing. Therefore, the research seeks to study how resident participation influence housing adequacy, which is based on the consideration of housing needs and rights. The case chosen in this research is the Government-led Urban Renewal in the Third Siwan Village Resettled Tenement. The objective is to obtain a greater understanding of the policy instruments used in the transformation of obsolete public housing, and the pattern of resident participation in the institutional framework. The main research question is: How does resident participation under Government-led Urban Renewal affect housing adequacy’ The question is disassembled to who are the actors and what are the actions taken by them’ How are policies arranged and implemented in the process’ What are the patterns of resident participation in the process’ Can the outcome be considered adequate housing’ The research applied multi-level analysis to identify how resident participation during the policy implementation process affected by institutional and policy framework, to find out whether the participation empowered residents or was operated by governance strategies. Overall, the research depicts how participation influence the accessibility and acceptability of residents in terms of housing adequacy. The research method composed of document analysis and semi-structured interview. Actors involved are identified for in-depth interviews. Reports, regulations and other documents related to the case were collected for the triangulation of data. The findings indicated that through the influence of interactions between resident participation and governance, the housing options provided to the residents in the case are deviating from the value of housing rights regarding housing adequacy. The urban renewal policy excluded tenants to participate by only benefit property owners to obtain new housing units after renewal. Meanwhile, the municipality was dedicated to achieving policy objectives, which was completing the urban renewal process within a limited time. Therefore, the municipality enhanced the exclusion of tenants and invested their resource on addressing issues concerned by the property owners, who mainly concerned about the value and outcome of their property during the participation process. Therefore, the housing outcome contrasted with the value of adequate housing, since resident participation was qualified by property ownership. The forming of the housing outcome strengthened the value of private property ownership and undermine housing adequacy of the disqualified residents. Keywords: Government-led Urban Renewal, Resident Participation, Governance, Urban Policy, Institution