Just how big is Taipei's population? What is the ideal size of a major city? Every Lunar New Year holiday, Taipei-ites are once again amazed at how freely the traffic flows on the city's main roads. No rush hour, no snarl-ups-with many people who come here to work or study having gone back home, Taiwan's first city, which also has the island's greatest concentration of white-collar workers, seems to breathe a long sigh of relief.

These past few years, unrelentingly high housing prices and crowded public spaces have been among the ubiquitous symptoms that Taipei City, constrained as it is within a ring of mountains, is filled to bursting point. In search of a better quality of life, more and more people are moving out to the suburbs, and Taipei's dormitory zone has spread as far as Hsinchu and Miaoli. How much private and public time and resources are consumed by their daily commute?

Kaohsiung, in the south of Taiwan, boasts our island's largest sea port and a hinterland far larger than Taipei's. But its traditional role has been as a center of manufacturing, and its cultural life has lagged far behind Taipei's. This has caused many people to leave Kaohsiung despite the natural advantages of its climate and geography, not only leading to today's "top-heavy" distribution of population, but also hindering Taiwan's progress towards joining the ranks of the developed nations. What is most regrettable is how so many people have been squeezed into a limited living space, losing the opportunity for a better quality of life. To quote a very practical example, 20-odd years ago the price of apartments near the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall in Taipei and in high-class residential districts in Kaohsiung was about NT$40,000 per ping (3.3m2). But today apartments near the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall cost over NT$300,000 per ping, while prices in central Kaohsiung are around NT$100,000 per ping. There are so many people who work in Taipei all their lives, but still cannot afford to buy their own home. Can Kaohsiung give them another choice?

Not long ago the Kaohsiung Metropolitan Development Foundation (KMDF), which brings together people from industry, government and the academic world, staged a two-day "1998 Kaohsiung Metropolis Exhibition" at the Taipei International Convention Center. This innovative exhibition included sections devoted to "future prospects," "culture and education," "life," "vitality" and "leisure," and presented a vision of an ideal future lifestyle. It pro-actively "sold" the port city, in the hope of attracting well-educated, enterprising young people to move south-to find a broader living space for themselves, and to create a more expansive future for Kaohsiung.

Can Kaohsiung really give people this choice? Is Taichung also a place where an ideal city can be built? And what about Hsinchu and Tainan? Can Taiwan give its residents any other pleasures than the accumulation of wealth? Can quality of life be affordable for everyone?

We surveyed Taipei residents' level of satisfaction with their living environment, and followed the KMDF to Kaohsiung to find out more about the city's current situation and future potential. We also interviewed many white-collar workers who have moved south from Taipei. We discovered that Kaohsiung has changed greatly in recent years. On the one hand, there has been rapid internationalization, traditional industries have moved out of the urban area, many service industries have moved in, and cultural activities have increased. On the other hand, local people have become determined to improve their environment and quality of life. The struggle over Takao Hill and the campaign by the Weiwu Park Promotion Association (which we reported on in our recent article "The Greening of Kaohsiung"), and the high degree of public support won by the KMDF over recent years, give the clearest evidence of this.

"Selling Kaohsiung" is not an attempt by Kaohsiung people to create another megacity or another Taipei, but the expression of the desire of people throughout Taiwan to make our homeland a better place to live.

An ancient poem reads, "When the river flows warm in spring, the ducks are the first to know." But in subtropical Taiwan, early spring is the time when the ducks which have spent the winter here make ready to leave on their northward migration. Another major article in this issue, "Lone Fliers in the Red of Dusk-Ducks and Geese," takes an unusual look at these flat-billed, brightly feathered visitors from the far north. What treatment do they get in a world increasingly dominated by mankind? What lessons should we draw from the unexpected and colorful sight of wild ducks and geese gathering on a sandbar in an urban river?

What kind of habitat can ducks and geese find in Taiwan? And can our island still provide a "habitat" for humans who have turned their backs on nature? The present generation of Taiwanese are looking hard for the answers, in the hope that we can leave a little piece of "Pure Earth" to the next generation.