From Wasteland to Wonderland--The Experiences of the Houchuwei Community

The story begins with a barren plot of land...

At a little past ten in the morning, the park is the world of old people, women and little children. The clouds that have been hanging for several days due to the northeasterly seasonal winds have for once been scattered by the sun, and the park's central plaza is dotted with the shadows of little ones. They twist around and around the dazzlingly colorful spiral slide. Neverthe less, the children cannot play too recklessly,because the gramps and grannies sitting on the wooden benches to the sidelines, seemingly lost in everyday gossip, have in fact never taken their eyes off them. Just returning from the market, mothers pass by and imperceptibly slow down their pace. Strolling past the low-lying fence and under the shade of the trees, they walk across the acupressure path,made of protruding stones that massage the bottoms of the feet, surreptitiously relishing ten minutes of relaxation.

As the clear, cool breeze brushes past the boughs of the old longan tree, the shooshing sound the branches and leaves make as they rub against each other is the loquacious tone that nature sings to people, in harmony with the sound of footfall or the hiss of sparking metal from the factory on the next street. All of a sudden, a rumble breaks the tranquilspell of the place. At first faraway, it grows closer and closer. If youcrane your neck and look up, you'll see the silvery white, twinkling underbelly of one of the airplanes that pass once every two minutes or so.

The wasteland where mosquitoes dine

Nearly ten different lanes radiate out from the Houte Community Park,one of three similar spots in the Houte subdivision, one part of the historical Houchuwei district. It is the heart of the neighborhood, wherepeople play and rest, where they pass through every day. Yet three yearsago, everyone disparaged it as a "marginal" strip of land.

The little nook underneath the park's big gnarled tree, is the place where the community's senior citizens always go to chat, fix tea and cook rice. It is fully provisioned with all the equipment--a table, chairs, a television,a gas stove and a food storage cabinet. Huang Hsiu-san, jokingly referred to as guanzhu, a double entendre meaning both "curator" and "in chargeof cooking," and Chouchen Hsien-hsing, who is called guanjia, meaning "butler," are faces that often pop up here.

They say that this piece of land was originally grown over with bamboo, and there was a building, which belonged to the Huang family, and an uncle and nephew of the Chen family (two of the five local clans, along with the Lin, Wang and Chang families). Later on, it was claimed by the government as the site of a planned park, but actual work was postponed indefinitely. They only cleared the bamboo grove. The remaining dried up, dead branches and leaves, the garbage and castaway junk which the neighbors voluntarily stacked, and the vegetable garden that was built in the planned area all merely served to feed a growing population of mosquitoes and emit a disagreeable odor.

Interestingly, this is what drew the attention of some master's and doctoral degree students at the Graduate Institute of Building and Planning at National Taiwan University (NTU), such as Yang Pei-ju and Chen Yun-chung.

At the time Yang Pei-ju was still studying for his doctorate. He says that the professors at the Graduate Institute of Building and Planning, based on their experiences abroad in community development, emphasized "participatory planning," meaning that the urban planner must leave his air-conditioned office, initiate planning by interacting with the users, and break the former pattern of top-to-bottom decision making. Nevertheless, no one had ever done this in Taiwan, and the process had stalled out at the theoretical stage. He therefore aspired to go out into the field and try an experiment.

Serving in the sticks

At that very time, the Taipei County government organized the "Taipei County University Student Community Service Project." Yang Pei-ju took part in the activities, along with some of his younger schoolmates at the Graduate Institute and some fellow students he met in social clubs. They began to consider hunting out an old community, because in the last twenty years, with rapid economic development and a great influx of urban immigrants, the quality of life in these places has drastically declined. An area where there is a latent demand among the residents for local renovation should be the most promising stage for the volunteers to invest their energies. Under these circumstances, they made their first contacts with Houchuwei.

Later on, the Community Service Project was discontinued due to a lack of funds, so 20 or 30 of the students formed their own "NTU Houchuwei Community Work Corps." Chen Yun-chung, then enrolled in the mechanical engineering department, was one of the members.

For Chen Yun-chung, an ethnic Chinese from Malaysia, joining the Work Corps was primarily a warm-up for testing into the Graduate Institute of Building and Planning. Why did he want to abandon a future career in engineering which is highly valued by society?

"It was mostly because I was attracted by the atmosphere of the Graduate Institute's classes. In that heady atmosphere of idealism, social service was given a lot of support, so I enrolled in professor Chang Ching-sen's 'Urban Problems and Public Policy' class. Those who attended were not only graduate students in the Institute, but also a lot of regular university 'riff-raff,' like members of the movie club or student protest 'zines. You know, in the mechanical engineering department, life was much more isolated. The professors' aspirations for their students had to do with how each one was advancing toward the demands of their profession. The topic most often talked about among my classmates was whether or not we'd passed the GRE and when we were going to apply to foreign universities. But when I was listening in on that class, everyone was taking part together and sharing resources. I realized that, besides reading books, I had a number of other possibilities and things that I could give to other people."

The strategy they envisioned was, with the help of experienced urban planners, to return to the people the right to decide environmental policy. They wanted to mobilize the people to organize local groups for managing public affairs, and to build up in them an identification with the community and further expand their concern for society.

In July 1992, the students entered Houchuwei with the ideal of fashioning a dream land, yet the first reaction they got from the residents was skepticism.

The students were divided into two teams--social survey and spatial planning. Each one of them went to visit the socially well-connected chiefs of each li (an administrative subdivision) and lin (a smaller subdivision within the li). They also visited the people who often strolled around the prospective park location, as well as those who were curious and active. The students also made flyers that read: "It's time for the old neighborhood to have a facelift," inviting residents over to participate in discussions. However, none of the people who received flyers or even those who promised to attend the discussions turned up at the appointed time.

"Perhaps it's that they don't believe they can decide upon the design," speculated the students. During interviews, most of the residents said they hoped that the government would start construction as soon as possible. But the residents were suspicious when the NTU students suggested that men, women and even children could come up with a new idea to replace the fait accompli plan.

What fun thing do we do this week?

This logjam finally broke after they held a "Community Environment Cleanup" activity. Along with several enthusiastic residents and children, they took hoes and plastic bags and spent all day clearing up garbage. They cleaned up an empty area, and all of a sudden, Chen Yun-chung recalls, "a lot of people started showing up at this place that used to be completely deserted. We began to get some recognition, and our morale got a boost."

In order to let the people further explore the various possibilities of using the park, and also to motivate them to get to know each other better, the students held one event after another. Gradually the interest of the residents was heightened.

From the "garden painting party" for children, to a dodge ball tournament for teenagers, to a neighborhood karaoke party suitable for young and old alike, at every occasion, the local residents began to arrive, dressed casually, often in T-shirts and shorts. Some people came toting their little dogs in their arms. During the karaoke party, people on and off the stage sang together, "You are the needle, I am the thread." Soon the hottest topic around the neighborhood had become, "What fun thing do we do this week?" Whether or not they had a good reason, everyone dropped by the park for a look.

Little by little, the students began to have some accomplishments of their own, and they entered into the stage of discussing park design.

In order to talk about ideas, they also prepared many styrofoam models to let the residents turn their ideas into something visible, or the students would do it themselves, making little changes while they talked. A senior citizen said that there should be a tree in the park, so a tree grew on the paper. After seeing it, the senior citizen said, "No, that's not right. The tree has to be bigger, so that cars can't come in."

In order to further understand the uses residents will make of the park, students planned a "space-feeling" diary. They gathered everyone together in a classroom and posted blank wallpaper on the blackboard. Together they imagined what "relations of endearment" they would have with the park during the 24 hours of the day.

At first, everyone was waiting for someone else to speak. Then, one middle-aged gentleman finally broke the ice, saying "I get up at five o'clock every morning to play badminton." The atmosphere began to heat up. Someone else said, "I have to do calisthenics." Children also began to pipe up: "After school, we want to play dodge ball." Immediately, another little voice was heard: "...and have water balloon fights too." This threw the whole room into a roaring fit of laughter. Lively creativity and a joyous aura had unexpectedly wafted into this little forum.

From farm plot to pavilion

At last, planning went into a countdown phase. The NTU students spent most of the day in the workshop they borrowed from the community kindergarten, bringing the model of the park to fruition. Chen Yun-chung says that it occurred to them that it might be dangerous for the kids to cut styrofoam, so while they were looking for suitable modeling material for children, they especially prepared cookies, cauliflower, straws and modeling clay. They even rehearsed the decision-making procedure in advance, the students all playing the roles of members of the community, to make the whole process come together more smoothly.

"Today [August 30] is a very important day," said Yang Pei-ju as he stood on the stage. "Within the next two weeks, we will complete our design." The residents--adults, children, women and old people--had done their own work and come back, each one giving their own reports. With the students' help in fine tuning, they turned the ideas in their heads into a "dream park" that everyone could accept.

During this phase, the people paid great attention to every detail, because every last blade of future grass might depend on what they did with their own hands. Because of the residents' cautious attentiveness, a funny story happened that later got passed around the town.

Professor Liu Ko-chiang, who had consistently played the role of consultant for the Houchuwei Community Work Corps, says that during the process the students discovered an empty spot in the design. They ran over to ask his opinion. Based on his rich community-planning experience in the United States, he suggested it could be designed as a "citizen's garden," with a vegetable plot and a small tool shed. Everyone could take turns with the chores of cultivation, and they could enjoy the pleasures of the farm in an urban setting.

Little did they anticipate that as soon as the sharp-eyed residents had a look at the mock-up, they would immediately notice that a new structure had been "sneaked in." Pointing at the tool shed, they remarked, "When did you put in the temple?" After they had gotten it straight that it was to be a garden, everyone rejected the idea. The little tool shed was finally turned into an open-air pavilion. From this it can be seen that when urban planners introduce foreign planning perspectives, they must be exceptionally careful.

Two weeks later, the model of the first park in Taiwan to be designed "popular participatory style" was formally unveiled.

The flower of Houchuwei

That they were able in a short three months to have this kind of success in motivating the conservative, traditional residents of Houchuwei testifies that there was certainly no lack of support from local representatives. Lin Hsiu-ying, director of the Houte Community Development Council, played this crucial role.

The situation was quite different from that in many advanced nations, where community organizations have been fully developed and urban planners can quickly begin their work without having to spend a great amount of time or energy breaking through to the lives of the residents. When the NTU Work Corps first entered into Houchuwei, not only were they unfamiliar with the daily life and locale, the community also had no organization representing the three lisinvolved, with whom they could interact. Because the rules of the game were not set, moving forward with work was a rather exacting task.

Lin Hsiu-ying grew up in Houchuwei. At first she ran her own daycare center. Three years ago, she returned from a trip to Thailand, and just at the time, the children's "garden painting party" was being organized. Her uncle Lin Sheng-chung, superintendent of the large Kuang Hsi temple and one of the lin chiefs in Houte li, asked her to take some kids from her class to have a barbecue and romp around. With her sprightly personality, Lin soon got on well with the NTU students.

She recalls with a mischievous smile, "Back when Yang Pei-ju said they wanted to make a park with the local citizens' participation on this piece of empty land, I immediately imagined a flower garden behind the emperor's palace with a little bridge and a flowing brook. I was enchanted by this vision; it seemed so lovely! And just at that time I was taking a class in the Open University's social studies department. I thought doing some social work would be kind of fun. So in this bumble-headed way, I got 'tricked' into it. Of course, the further I got involved, the more I discovered that accomplishing the feat was a completely different thing from what I'd first imagined.

"I attended two preparatory meetings and then quit going, because I felt that the discussion process was very long and had no concrete results. I said to the people from NTU, whatever you want to do, I'll be responsible for carrying it out."

When they were working on the karaoke party, she told the students what kind of atmosphere the people would probably want. She also went down to Kuang Hsi temple and borrowed chairs and wooden boards and bamboo scaffolding, and helped build the stage. She rented and borrowed PA equipment. And on the appointed day, she went around everywhere "grabbing people." The event turned out to be quite a success.

When chatting about that occasion, Lin Hsiu-ying recalls another interesting story. "When we were doing the neighborhood survey, I learned from some of the old folks that back when Japan ruled Taiwan, Houchuwei had a famous product used as a fragrant additive to tea, a kind of jasmine called the hsiu-ying flower [written with the same Chinese characters as Lin's name]. The plants were about 100 cm tall and had little white blossoms about as big as the tip of your finger. They say that if you exported a pound of them sun-dried to Japan, you could trade them for 100 pounds of white rice. I told Yang Pei-ju, and they thought I was pulling their legs, claiming to be the flower of Houchuwei."

From Halfway Stop to Bamboo Circle

Lin Hsiu-ying has slightly dark skin, a pair of vibrant eyes and short hair that reflects the light with a reddish glimmer. Don't underestimate Lin Hsiu-ying because of her youth; she has a thorough understanding of local affairs.

She says that in the past Houchuwei was called "Halfway Stop." It was the station which everyone had to pass, located midway between Taipei and Luchou. The residents grew a hedge of bamboo to block overflowing water from the Tanshui River and also to keep out thieves, so the town developed the name "Bamboo Circle" (in Mandarin, "Chuwei").

The place has about 3000 households and 20,000 people. (Most homes have three generations living under one roof.) This is quite a lot more than most people feel should be under the scope of a single neighborhood. The residents can be divided into two groups. The first group are families who immigrated from mainland China during the Qing dynasty. They now consist of five major clans. Lin Hsiu-ying herself is a descendant of Lin Ching-tun, patriarch of the 100-year old Orchid Heights Estate.

In the past the people who lived here were nearly all impoverished tenant farmers, so they had a lot of solidarity. This special characteristic continues to the present day. At the beginning of the year, a dispute over a trivial matter took place between a youth and the park caretaker Chen Po-nien. Several of the senior citizens in the neighborhood gathered together, and wielding canes they "exacted justice" on Chen Po-nien's behalf. Later on, the young man took them to court, but everyone testified unanimously that nothing had ever happened. So in the end he had no choice but to drop the case.

The second major group in Houchuwei are urban immigrants from central and south Taiwan who moved north to improve their lot in life. Their mu tual relations are more distant. In the 1970s, the government began promoting its "Living Rooms are Factories" program, which encouraged people to use their homes as places of industry. For this reason, the ground floors of most buildings are workshops, the above floors residential, and a mixed-up hodgepodge of family life and commerce can be seen everywhere.

Who's going to make the decision?

Although everyone has watched her grow up and knows exactly who she is, when she confronted such a conservative network of human relationships, Lin Hsiu-ying could not avoid spending a lot of time making the rounds, engaging in many a tete-a-tete over tea. She even resorted to borrowing a little "authority" to get the ball rolling smoothly. In the past, she had taken on a position as campaign aid to Sanchung mayor Chen Ching-chun. When she began circulating in the capacity of Community Development Council director, she therefore spared herself a good many obstacles in communication.

All this work notwithstanding, once the plan impacted the privileges of some of the residents, disputes were inevitable. For example, because of safety considerations for children at play, the plan intended for Lane 170 of Sanho Road to curve around one end of the park. But the residents of the lane insisted that it run straight through park territory, for the convenience of driving their cars. The two sides became locked in a stalemate. Finally, under the insistence of the Work Corps and the Development Council, the road was not allowed to bisect the park. But the mutual resentments were never fully resolved.

This also gave rise to a crucial question: "When the planners' value judgments clash with the opinions of most of the residents, how should it be resolved?"

On the park site there had originally been built a Fujianese-style brick building. The NTU students were inclined to preserve the building, and they designed a few scenarios for it, including making it an activity center, or maintaining its exterior appearance but remodeling it as a cultural exhibition hall, to connect with Houchuwei's history. But the residents objected vociferously. The reason was, "That's nothing but a hastily built, tumbledown shack; it's of no value." They signed a joint protest, and finally, in respect for the residents' opinions, the building was pulled down.

Furthermore, the gap between Western theory and the practical realities of Taiwan led to some friction that constantly surfaced. Following foreign precedents, the students of the Work Corps believed that the source of vitality in community work is women, especially housewives, who have an intimate conneion to social networks and the matters of everyday life. During all the activities the students therefore strongly encouraged them to speak up. According to the traditions of Chinese society, however, females almost never have an opportunity to express their own views in public gatherings. This was certainly the case in Houchuwei, and it often led to some difficulties. Most of the ladies either said, "I've no opinion," or otherwise, "Go ask my husband." After their ideas had been solicited many times, one even responded, "Am I really that important? Why do you keep pestering me?" Chen Yun-chung explains, "We acted on a belief that the people themselves can oversee their surroundings."

The role of government

During the time when the Graduate Institute of Building and Planning and the residents of Houchuwei were working together to plan the park, city hall had already contracted out the project. But after Yang Pei-ju, Lin Hu-ying and others threw all their energy into arguing their case--and also due to the fact that the mayor came from Houchuwei--they finally won the decision to make it a "model participatory park."

Nevertheless, because citizen participation was diametrically opposed to the old top-to-bottom procedures, the Work Corps and Development Council, playing the role of "spokespersons for the people," frequently butted up against the system.

Yang Pei-ju notes that in order to prevent collusion between administration and business, the government has a regulation that once a design has been drawn up, it cannot be amended. But this inflexible method is hard to implement with participatory planning, because the residents might at any time imagine something new. Changing the design several times is a common occurrence. Conflict between public opinion and public institutions is hard to avoid.

At first the city hall believed that citizen participation merely meant holding a few meetings. Little did they suspect that even the design and construction crews would have to be commissioned from scratch. The reason why the blueprints had to be frequently revised had something to do with the students' high ideals and the stress they laid on scenic esthetics, which stemmed from a lack of practical engineering experience. Sanchung Municipal Public Works Department Chief Chiu says that from the start they had planned to build a pond. From the government's point of view, they had to consider public safety, and the problems of water and electricity consumption; there were questions in terms of feasibility.

As it turned out, as one design was revised, throughout the system, plans had to be changed, work stopped, and reports made to higher levels of government. There was also the possibility of meeting up with trouble from the legislature. And the budget had been allotted well in advance, so that there were frequent shortfalls in construction funds. Time was consequently wasted with processing documents. According to Chiu's estimates, every time the blueprint was revised, it took three to four months on the average before work could begin again.

Was this kind of price worth paying? Yang Pei-ju believes that the capital required to undertake participatory planning (including human resources and time) may be more than ten times as expensive as conventional methods, but because the results are more closely in accord with the requirements of the people, the corresponding rate of complications and revisions after the fact is greatly reduced. From a long term perspective, it is unquestionably beneficial.

Chen Yun-chung describes this process as "unity and struggle." Without the government's regulations and spending controls, it would be impossible to implement similar public works projects. Nevertheless, when confronted with an inflexible administrative system, urban planners have no choice but to think of extreme means of communication, even using the pressure of public opinion, to struggle for the people's right to control their living space.

The case of the stolen ballot box

Every manner of deliberation was tossed around for two years, and finally the work was completed. Then they returned it to the care of the local citizens. During the course of the neighborhood survey, everyone had become aware of the need for an activity center, but the members of the Work Corps either went to perform their military service, graduated, or simply grew weary of the onerous labors and quit. In order to keep going, the students requested Liu Ko-chiang to turn the program into a for-credit work/study course at the Graduate Institute. In this way, besides Chen Yun-chung, they acquired five new faces.

The completion of the park does not guarantee things at the activity center will go completely smoothly. Lin Hsiu-ying says that this time the people taking part are virtually a different breed. The process of designing the park made many feel that they had been unable to express their own opinions, and that they were "not given their fair share." So now they quickly stand up and fight for their own rights, and their attitude is very insistent. For instance the reason the location of the activity center had to be changed was because nobody was willing to let it obstruct the field of vision outside their window.

The many different problems in communication which they encountered when the park was being built have yet to be entirely resolved. The design of the activity center is, furthermore, three-dimensional. Most of the local residents find the drawings hard to grasp, and expressing their opinions is doubly difficult. And the residents are not as enthusiastic about citizen-participation projects as they once were. A number of different factors eventually led up to the incident of the stolen ballot box.

The students from the Graduate Institute pasted up several different design charts on the walls of the open-air pavilion and held a public vote. All the local residents, from three years old to ninety-nine, had the right to cast a ballot. Lu Li-li, one of the Work Corps members, says that with this method every user has the chance to express their own opinion. Many of the older generation, however, believed that children lack the ability to make judgments and that letting them vote was fundamentally unconstitutional.

For this reason, one group led by an elderly li chief ripped up the ballot box, and started a dispute with the students. Then the residents of Lane 17O brought up their old grievances again. Lin Hsiu-ying stood up to intercede, but the microphone was snatched away by the angry residents, and the entire meeting descended into chaos.

Lin Hsiu-ying says that on this occasion, from the viewpoint of the locals, the students were "strangers." They had not integrated into the community, so they had not completely listened to all the opinions, and the event was imperfectly planned. "If at the beginning they had prepared a separate ballot box for those 15 years and under to submit their opinions for consideration in the decision-making process, maybe there wouldn't have been a problem," she observed in retrospect.

In the end, on that same evening they used the traditional method: Lin Hsiu-ying took the students to visit the old li chief and apologize. But after the incident the old li chief and his family gradually decreased their involvement in the community activities.

The Work Corps were also considerably disheartened. They had originally just innocently wanted to realize the ideal of participatory planning. They had had no idea that in fact they would confront so many conflicts that were difficult or even impossible to resolve. Their final analysis was, "Perhaps we were too direct in challenging the traditional patriarchal decision-making system. Of course, voting was the least desirable option. We wish we could have had ample time to gather a common consensus from everyone in advance. Three months was simply too short. All of Taiwan was under authoritarian control for too long, so as soon as the citizens have the chance to take things into their own hands, they think that the louder the noise they make, the greater the power they'll get. Maybe it's really still too early to do participatory planning. But if you don't try it, you'll never take a turn for the better, will you?"

Community activism moves forward

Ever since word got out about Houchuwei's residents helping design their own park, a large number of small-scale planning cases, such as designing neighborhood pathways, have floated all on their own to the Graduate Institute. A new wave of social activism has mysteriously taken shape. But Lu Li-li believes the significance of the Houchuwei community's experience does not lie in its trailblazing new territory, but rather in "demonstrating a procedure for implementing Western concepts of popular participation in public works within a traditional Chinese community."

For Lin Hsiu-ying, the experience was at once halcyon and harrowing. Nowadays, she catches wind of every affair big and small. She seems to have become the neighborhood "mother hen." Many people, however, misread her as having a hidden agenda, believing she intends to accumulate personal resources to run for elected office. And mention of the hassles of raising funds for events makes her sigh right away, "How tiring!"

In a recent Community Development Council meeting, Lin Hsiu-ying made preparations to resign and "let someone else have a shot at it." She has not abandoned social work; instead, "I think that I'm still very young. I can try something different. Even if I'm not the director, everyone has still put their trust in me, and I can still dedicate part of my heart to the community."

The activity center's construction certification has already been approved, and NTU students have been commissioned to supervise the work. How to institute and implement park regulations, and how to further utilize the energies of community organizations to solve other civic problems, such as car parking or illegal structures, are even greater challenges for the future.

Still, from a number of small details, one can observe some felicitous phenomena. Recently the development council used the strength of the group to push medicine peddlers out of the park. And Yu Ching-chuen of Weite li believes that through the park planning process, "We free-floaters who came from other parts finally had a chance to enter into the community and get to know everyone."

Perhaps this is a source of community consciousness. Perhaps the members of a democratic society must go through this kind of community experience to gain the abilities they need to exchange views, compromise and foster a consensus, so that they can keep growing.

[Picture Caption]

(left) Everyone hurry up! Lend a hand, and a mind, to help design our park. (courtesy of NTU Houchuwei Community Work Corps)

(right) This is Taiwan's first park to be successfully developed through citizen participatory planning.

In the past, the park grounds were a garbage dump, shunned by local residents. (courtesy of NTU Houchuwei Community Work Corps)

Lin Hsiu-ying, director of the Houte Community Development Council (first on the right), served as a bridge of communication between local residents and the students from NTU's Graduate Institute of Building and Planning.

Divided into four groups, adults and children all together, the local residents pool their imaginations to construct the ideal park. (courtesy of NTU Houchuwei Community Work Corps)

The cluttered and deserted park grounds were set in order, with hoes and elbow grease, by the NTU work corps and these enthusiastic locals. (courtesy of NTU Houchuwei Community Work Corps)

Since the park has been completed, the old folks don't have to be anxious about having no place to go.

If the weather is nice, teachers take their little charges to the nearby park, a perfect open-air classroom.

Some people "stake their turf" in the park, unabashedly lashing their family's chair to a big tree.

A park that has taken into account the needs of different community members is public space that everyone loves to use.

（right） This is Taiwan's first park to be successfully developed through citizen participatory planning.

In the past, the park grounds were a garbage dump, shunned by local residents. （courtesy of NTU Houchuwei Community Work Corps）

Lin Hsiu-ying, director of the Houte Community Development Council （first on the right）, served as a bridge of communication between local residents and the students from NTU's Graduate Institute of Building and Planning.

Divided into four groups, adults and children all together, the local residents pool their imaginations to construct the ideal park. （courtesy of NTU Houchuwei Community Work Corps）

The cluttered and deserted park grounds were set in order, with hoes and elbow grease, by the NTU work corps and these enthusiastic locals. （courtesy of NTU Houchuwei Community Work Corps）

Since the park has been completed, the old folks don't have to be anxious about having no place to go.

If the weather is nice, teachers take their little charges to the nearby park, a perfect open-air classroom.

Some people "stake their turf" in the park, unabashedly lashing their family's chair to a big tree.

A park that has taken into account the needs of different community members is public space that everyone loves to use.