An awakening
There’s an especially high number of old buildings in Tainan because the city hasn’t been quite so badly affected as other cities by rapid development. However, while Tainan has a great deal of cultural patrimony in the form of old buildings, a group of architecture and history professors from National Cheng Kung University, which is based in the city, discovered that students in the Department of Architecture researching the preservation of historic buildings had to travel to Japan, Europe, or other distant places to visit actual historic preservation projects.
The professors started thinking about what they could do on their own to protect historic buildings, and they ended up establishing the Foundation for Historic City Conservation and Regeneration (FHCCR) in 2001. Thanks to their efforts, people in Tainan began to develop a stronger appreciation for the value of old structures.
Over a period of eight or nine years, a wave of enthusiasm for community-based efforts to revive old buildings gradually spread throughout Taiwan, and the results spurred an uptick in tourism.
As part of the “New Uses for Old Buildings Awards” launched by the FHCCR in 2006, people have been searching everywhere in Tainan for old buildings of high quality. Noteworthy structures are introduced to the public with an eye to sparking public interest.
But, with tourism in Taiwan experiencing a boom in recent years, the basic philosophy that originally inspired the drive to preserve old buildings has quietly gone awry.
The worry shared by many has been expressed by FHCCR president Yen Shih-hua: “The core value underlying the effort to preserve historic environments and old buildings ought to be the human element. Once you get away from that, you’re left with an empty shell that is devoid of spirit.” If we seek only utilitarian goals and focus only on developing tourism, says Yen, we’ll end up losing what makes neighborhoods unique. In his view, this would harm residential environments, detract from local culture, and even hasten the disappearance of urban culture.
Old cities are the heart and soul of culture. Preserving neighborhoods and old patterns of urban culture is a task that cities throughout the world have to deal with as societies progress.