INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF URBAN AND REGIONAL RESEARCH 1

DOI:10.1111/1468-2427.13291

— FROM GLOBALIZING TAIPEI TO LEARNING

AMSTERDAM: Referencing as a Politicizing Strategy for
Urban Development in Taiwan
Yi-­L ing Chen and Chantalle Elisabeth Rietdijk

Abstract
This article examines the transformation of urban referencing in Taipei City after
democratization, using policy mobility theories and case study research methods to ‘follow
policy changes’ over three decades. It argues that geopolitical considerations in the 1990s
prompted Taipei to adopt the global city discourse as a political strategy, subsequently
leading to the implementation of neoliberal urban policies. These policies encouraged
property-­led development and housing speculation, exacerbating housing affordability
issues. Amidst these challenges, a progressive bottom-­up social housing movement emerged
in 2010, drawing inspiration from the Dutch model. However, this process of policy mobility
is selective, with Amsterdam serving more as an inspirational benchmark than a direct
model for replication. Neoliberalism hinders both Dutch and Taiwanese social housing
policies from achieving housing justice. This case study of Taiwan’s post-­democratization
urban development will also contribute to the literature on urban developmentalism.

Introduction
In 1996, the Taipei City Government held an international conference called the
‘Conference on Strategies for an International City’. This was the first time in Taiwan
that strategies for Taipei to become a global city were presented to the city government
(Taiwan Today, 1996). From that moment onward, the goal of becoming a global city
became an important justification for urban planning in Taipei, and megaprojects aimed
at enhancing the city as a financial hub for East Asia were prioritized. Globalizing Taipei
was a goal that gradually shaped neoliberal urbanism and fueled housing speculation.
In 2010 severe problems of housing affordability mobilized a social housing movement,
inspired by Amsterdam, where 40% of the total housing stock is social housing. This
movement challenged the issue of housing justice and gradually changed the referencing
model from ‘globalizing Taipei’ to ‘learning Amsterdam’.
This article traces the changes in urban referencing in Taipei City from the
1990s until the current implementation of the social housing policy. Drawing from
the theories of policy mobility, it examines the geopolitical reasoning and politicizing
strategies to mobilize different models as references while adopting a geographically
sensitive approach that provides a critical understanding of policy diffusion and ‘the
trans-­local circulation of ideas and expertise’ (Theodore and Peck, 2023: 195). It first
examines Taipei’s political and economic context in the 1990s, exploring why globalizing
Taipei was a new goal for the city and how it facilitated neoliberal urban policies that
would lead to the emergence of the social housing movement in 2010. The second part
focuses on how Amsterdam became a model city for Taipei from 2010 and the process
of policy mutation in the implementation of social housing policies in Taiwan. This
policymaking process is global yet, at the same time, embedded in the localities, which
are interconnected in complex ways (Prince, 2020).

The authors gratefully acknowledge valuable comments from Susan Fainstein, Jamie Peck, Arie van Wijngaarden,
Kees Dignum, four IJURR reviewers and the writing group of the Wyoming Institute for Humanities Research. We
especially thank the late Jeroen van der Veer, vice director and senior policy advisor of the Amsterdamse Federatie
van Woningcorporaties [Amsterdam Federation of Housing Corporations], for his unwavering support of Taiwan’s
social housing movement.

© 2024 Urban Research Publications Limited.

 CHEN AND RIETDIJK 2

Housing is central to this study because housing affordability has been a severe
problem in Taipei since the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis. Housing has ‘represented
one of the most dynamic new frontiers of late neoliberalism during the decades of
economic boom and at the outset of the crisis’ (Rolnik, 2013). Rising inequality after
neoliberalization has been a significant factor contributing to urban crises around
the world. These crises specifically manifest in declining housing affordability
(Florida, 2017). Therefore, housing research is the key area to improve and increase
social equality, and it should be repositioned as the central issue of urban agendas
(UN-­Habitat, 2016).
There is little research on urban policy mobility in Taiwan or exploring how
cities change their learning models over a longer period of time. Therefore, this study
aims to ‘follow policy changes’ since the 1990s, rather than ‘following the policy’
(Peck and Theodore, 2012). It takes a case study approach informed by interviews and
document analysis, benefiting from personal involvement in the advocacy process for
social housing. The results of this study provide three contributions. First, Taiwan’s
geopolitical situation is identified as an underlying factor in policy mobility, contributing
to the justification for neoliberal urban projects in the 1990s. Second, the study finds that
emerging urban movements after democratization can transform the dominant policy
direction by providing alternatives, as the mobilization processes from Globalizing
Taipei to Learning Amsterdam shifted from top-­down to bottom-­up. This finding adds
to the literature on urban developmentalism (Doucette and Park, 2019). Third, this study
analyzes the two housing systems, those of Taiwan and the Netherlands, developmental
and social democratic, from a relational perspective to understand the process of policy
mobility, and the mutations that arose in this process (Aalbers, 2022). It concludes that
neoliberalism hinders both Dutch and Taiwanese social housing policies from achieving
housing justice.

Policy mobility and worlding cities

Policy mobility research marks a relational turn in policy studies (Pence, 2020)
and contributes to the shift to relational thinking by examining the relationship between
global and local processes in city making (Jacobs, 2012; Prince, 2012). Policy ideas
travel across locations through globally interconnected actors who adapt these ideas
to local contexts. The role of policy networks and their capacity to circulate policies
influences urban development in local settings. This process is mobile and fixed at
the same time because the fluidity of ideas has to be fixed in a territory through a
relational interaction (McCann and Ward, 2010). The global circulation of policies and
models for development involves policy assemblage through mobilities and mutations.
To understand ‘how policymaking operates, how policies, policy models and policy
knowledge/expertise circulate and how these mobilities shape places’, it is important to
pay attention to place, space, and scale to analyze the ‘politics both within and beyond
institutions of governance’ (McCann and Ward, 2013: 2).
Globalization has accelerated mobility. The growth of the urban marketing and
branding consultancy sector, city partnerships, and global policy exchange networks
promote ‘fast policy’ as an urban solution (Peck, 2011). Jamie Peck and Nik Theodore
(2015) argue that fast policies accelerate policy traffic across borders and hasten
‘interconnectivity and cross-­referential intensity’. This flow of information makes it
easier for cities to grasp policy ideas from other cities worldwide, speeding up the
policy learning process. The accelerating process of ‘policy making, through mobility
and mutation’ is full of complexities (ibid.: xv–xxi). Policy is not only actively produced
in local settings but also actively circulates through policy networks as a commodity
(Cochrane and Ward, 2012). Local translations of global policy are inherently subject to
mistranslations due to differences in the ‘lived experiences of cities’ and the ‘symbolic
language of public policy’ (ibid.: 6).
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Policy-­m obility research provides various insights into policy models,

connections, movements, institutions, actors and techniques (Theodore and Peck, 2023:
196). Different researchers seek to answer questions of policy transfer from one country
to another or the reciprocal process of policy circulation, including: 1) What are models
or non-­m odels? 2) Who are the actors in the networks and what are their power
relations? The actors can be from different geographical scales from global to local
communities. National states are no longer the major agents in this process (Temenos
and McCann, 2013: 347). Ananya Roy (2012) argues that ‘middling technocrats’ are
the key actors in her ethnographic study; 3) When and where does the policy transfer
happen? The timing often happens in conditions of crises (Prince, 2020: 188; see also
Peck and Theodore, 2015). The direction of transfer is not only between global North
and South. There are increasingly South-­to-­South movements (Roy and Ong, 2011;
Prince, 2020); 4) How? The process is messy and uneven. It involves networking,
assemblage through translation and selection, and mutation according to the context
of global and local politics; 5) Why? Peck and Theodore (2010: 170) argue that ‘(prior)
ideological alignments’ are crucial, so the chosen models are more likely to ‘affirm and
extend dominant paradigms’ and ‘consolidate powerful interests’. Russell Prince (2020:
186) argues that ‘policy actors can be conditioned and shaped by particular policy
rationales and ways of thinking’. For the cities in the global South, the concept of
worlding cities and urban imagination is a useful explanation.
In Worlding Cities Ananya Roy and Aihwa Ong (2011) expanded on the global city
theory by arguing how Asian cities hoped to become global cities while decolonizing at
the same time. They hereby referred to the experiences of various Asian cities, instead
of cities in the global North. In this book, Ong (2011) questioned two popular analytical
methods of investigating global city practices, capitalism and postcolonialism, and
deemed them economistic or politically reductionist for neglecting the complexity of
the urban while engaging with the global (ibid.: 2). Ong proposed three angles to more
thoroughly examine these ‘highly dynamic’ processes. First, cities as sites of problem
solving related to modern life and national interests; second, cities as the nexus of
situated and transnational ideas for solutions to urban problems; and third, the new
forms of governmentality that come with a particular array of the public and private,
which originates from borrowings, appropriations, and alliances of neoliberal techniques
that fuels Asian cities’ transformation through inter-­city comparison, referencing or
modeling (ibid.: 3–5).
Eugene McCann et al. identify three contributions by worlding cities to the study
of policy mobility. It begins with an analysis of urbanism, South–South mobilities in the
global South, and ‘the embodied practices of migration, trade, and worldly aspirations
by subaltern subjects’ (2013: 585). Second, mass dreams from below, rather than visions
imposed from above, are the driving force of reference. This is a worldview of the
‘postcolonial subject’ that expresses their desire to become global and ‘make a place in
the world’ (ibid.: 585). The third is to question the neglect of cities in the global South
in urban theory (ibid.: 585–6).
As in other East Asian developmental states, urbanization in Taiwan has many
characteristics of ‘urban developmentalism’ (Doucette and Park, 2019). The provision of
urban infrastructure prioritizes the needs of national economic development. Property-­
led development has gradually become a key urban policy in East Asia, and land-­based
accumulation has grown in importance in the East Asian states’ economies (Shin, 2019).
However, Asian urbanism is diverse and has no singular defining narrative (ibid.). Jamie
Doucette and Laam Hae (2021) document how progressive movements are changing
urban planning in Seoul. In Japan, South Korea and Taiwan democratization is an
important factor in exploring the formation of urban policies.
This article analyzes changes in learning models and their justifications by
asking the question of why ‘Globalizing Taipei’ and ‘Learning Amsterdam’ have gained
 CHEN AND RIETDIJK 4

momentum in different local contexts. It also explores how these models mutate
and influence policy shifts in Taiwan. The time span of the research comprises three
decades, starting from the 1990s. This allows for the policy mobility method to focus on
‘following policy changes’ within the recipient country rather than ‘following policies’
(Peck and Theodore, 2012) to track the networks and paths of the circulating ideas.
One of the authors has been involved in the housing movement since 1989, which has
provided a vast amount of first-­hand information about the meetings and events that
were part of the process of policy mobility in Taipei. Since the social housing movement
is a recent event, this research interviews government officials and spokespersons for
social organizations involved in the social housing movement and subsequent policy
implementation. The research has followed changes in urban policies related to housing
in Taiwan for over 30 years and seeks to explain how the changes occur.

Globalizing Taipei in the 1990s

Global city research emerged in the 1980s in the global North to explore
‘how global forces and dynamics impact local and regional social spaces’ (Brenner
and Keil, 2006: 6). As cities were undergoing global capitalist restructuring caused
by the new international division of labor and the crisis of North Atlantic Fordism,
decentralized and flexible production started a new uneven geographical development.
While many cities in the global North were affected by deindustrialization and suffered
economic decline, a few rose to coordinate the new global commodity chains (ibid.:
8–11). These cities became dominant command and control centers for global capitalism,
headquarters locations for transnational firms, and agglomerations for advanced
production and financial services industries (ibid.: 189–191). The rise of global cities
underlines the importance of cities as hubs and nodes of global finance and capital in
today’s economies. Economic fluctuations make cities eager to look for strategies and
best practices to improve their comparative advantages and reach global city status
(McCann and Ward, 2013).
Global city theories have provided economic reasoning and gained political
support in Taiwan since the 1990s. Scholars and governments have used these theories to
prioritize neoliberal urban development in Taipei City, focusing on large-­scale projects.
The economic purpose was to develop a new economic base to attract international
capital by making Taipei the ‘node’ or ‘hub’ of Taiwan (Chou, 2005). In geopolitical
terms, the Taipei City Government realized that marketing Taipei as a city was easier
than promoting Taiwan as a country because of its diplomatic isolation. This led to a
strategic focus on improving the image and visibility of the city (Wang, 2004).
The driving force was the new challenges that followed the economic
liberalization and political democratization that started in Taiwan in the 1980s. As one
of the East Asian tigers, Taiwan benefited from the emergence of global production
networks in the 1960s and became a site for labor-­intensive manufacturing. Following
the Plaza Accord between the US and Japan in 1985, the value of the Japanese, Taiwanese
and Korean currencies significantly increased. This economic progress came with labor
reforms that altered production costs in Taiwan. Looking for cheaper labor, Taiwan’s
manufacturers increasingly moved their production lines to China in the 1990s, even
though the political tensions were ongoing (Wu, 2019; Hamilton and Kao, 2020). When
China became a member of the World Trade Organization in 2001, and Taiwan joined a
year later, Taiwan became one of the initiators in making China the factory of the world
(Wu, 2019). As a result, Taiwan experienced a considerable loss of factories and urgently
needed to develop a new economic base.
Few literatures of global cities have mentioned the geopolitical factor (Moisio
and Paasi, 2013), which was a specific motive for Taiwan. The lifting of martial law
in 1987 initiated Taiwan’s democratization era. Shui-­bian Chen from the Democracy
Progressive Party (DPP) won the Taipei City’s first mayoral election in 1994, and the
 FROM GLOBALIZING TAIPEI TO LEARNING AMSTERDAM 5

DPP became more active in the pursuit of strategies of international recognition to

overcome the diplomatic isolation that resulted from Taiwan losing its seat in the United
Nations to China in 1971, and the United States subsequently recognizing the People’s
Republic of China (PRC) in 1979. The ‘One China Policy’ principle effectively shut down
Taiwan’s diplomatic relations. However, global cities theories provided the DPP-­led
city government with a new vision for building international relations, through which
cities could transcend national boundaries and directly connect to the world. Hence,
city diplomacy became a vital internationalization strategy for Taipei City. Mayor Chen
actively built connections with capital cities and held many international conferences
in Taipei, even though interference from China constantly prevented cities from joining
the city network (Lin, 1998; Jou, 2005).
Between 1990 and 2010, the Taipei City Government implemented four mega
projects with the intention of building a global city. The Xinyi Planning District,
Nangang Economic and Trade Park, Neihu Technology Park and Taipei Main Station
Special District were developed as new economic bases in financial services, software
industries and tourism, respectively (Jou et al., 2012). The Xinyi Planning District, also
called the ‘Taipei Manhattan’ project, was the most iconic, including what was, at that
time, the tallest building in the world, the Taipei 101. To reach these goals, the Taipei
City government encouraged private investment in city development and relaxed
building codes to make megaprojects possible.
Neoliberal urbanism came with the strategy of globalizing Taipei. Urban renewal
and development policies changed from providing the necessary infrastructure to being
a tool for economic development (Hsu and Hsu, 2013: 686). Referencing urban policy
from other world cities, especially major global urban centers such as New York, Tokyo
and London, provided Taiwan with new ideas for urban planning (Hsu and Hsu, 2013).
However, housing development was ignored in these projects. Taipei Manhattan did
not include any affordable housing projects (Jou and Lin, 2008), which was different
from development projects such as Battery Park City in New York and Canary Wharf
in London, located in original ‘global cities’ (Fainstein, 2008). In fact, none of Taiwan’s
mega projects implemented before 2010 provided affordable housing.
The process of city making can be expressed by two features: privatized
urbanization and speculative cities. Privatized urbanization is characterized by
the privatization of state-­owned land and a shift toward entrepreneurism in urban
governance (Harvey, 1989; Jou et al., 2012). In urban planning, the public sector
enhances the private sector’s role in conducting urban projects by providing profitable
incentives, such as floor area bonuses and transferable development rights (Shih et
al., 2018). Urban development projects almost exclusively target profitmaking, while
state-­led slum clearance causes mass displacement of low-­to-­middle-­income families,
especially renters (Hsu and Hsu, 2013). Consequently, new gated communities and
luxury apartments destroy the community networks of the old neighborhoods (ibid.),
contributing to the aforementioned urban crises.
In the 1980s, neoliberalism gradually shifted Taiwan’s policies toward
privatization, liberalization, deregulation, the open market and competition
(Chen, 2005). Neoliberal trends emerged simultaneously with democratization, which
made the interests of voters policy priorities. A Globalizing Taipei reflected the collective
aspirations of its people, as the city could become a center of international connectivity
that would overcome diplomatic isolation. With the main actor in its implementation the
first democratically elected municipal government, Globalizing Taipei exacerbated its
housing problems by reinforcing its status as a city of speculation through privatization
and profit-­driven urban policies.
Taiwan’s housing policy has always targeted home ownership, paying less
attention to low-­income people (ibid.). After 1990, neoliberalization and democratization
had a greater impact on housing in Taiwan, and these goals have remained unchanged.
 CHEN AND RIETDIJK 6

Although democracy has brought about the rise of civil society and greater citizen
participation, at the same time, the power of the capitalist class has increased through
lobbying (McAllister, 2016). On the one hand, democratization allows governments
from the national to the local level to formulate policies that benefit the majority of
the people; on the other hand, it provides opportunities for politicians who represent
specific interests, especially the elites. This is particularly the case in Taiwan, where
politicians must raise large amounts of money for their campaigns (Fell, 2018). Real
estate developers are major contributors to these campaigns, demonstrating the
intertwining of politics with privatized urban development (Chou and Chang, 2008).
Under the new neoliberal governance approach prioritizing market mechanisms,
several low-­interest mortgage loan programs were developed to increase the number of
consumers and thereby stimulate the housing market (Chen, 2024). Mortgage programs
have been the central housing policy since the 1990s, aiming at satisfying the middle
class and property developers.

The social housing movement and the Dutch model

These speculative and privatized urbanisms for the globalization of Taipei
sustained the housing market through several economic crises. However, housing
affordability remained a problem and ultimately gave rise to the social housing movement
(Chen, 2020). Taiwan’s housing prices have nearly doubled since the real estate boom in
2005, as uncertainty in global financial markets during the 2008 global financial crisis
led to the repatriation of Taiwanese overseas capital (ibid.). The Taiwanese government
lowered inheritance taxes at that time to encourage this reshoring.
Another reason is that mortgage rates have been very low for decades, prompting
speculation on rising land prices. However, rising house prices during recessions sparked
social anger, and a strong social housing movement in 2010 led to the establishment of
the Social Housing Advocacy Consortium (SHAC). For the first time, SHAC, consisting
of academics and social activists, considered social rental housing as an option for
battling housing unaffordability. As housing became a major issue for the first time in
Taiwan, social housing emerged as a new policy solution and a key campaign issue in
elections. Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-­wen was elected in 2016; one of her pledges was
to increase the share of social rental housing in the total housing stock from 0.08% to
5% between 2016 and 2024.
The term ‘social housing’, or social rental housing, originated in Europe. It is
similar to subsidized rental and not-­for-­profit housing in the US, but not necessarily
built by the government or only designated for the poor. Before 2010, the social housing
stock in Taipei City made up only 0.64% of all housing stock and only 0.08% in Taiwan
(SHAC, 2022a). To start social housing in Taiwan from ground zero, various questions
were raised by scholars and social activists in SHAC (SHAC, 2022b). These questions
concerned the provider and financing of social housing: Should it be the government, the
private sector, public corporations or tenant cooperatives? Other questions included how
to ensure the social acceptance of social housing in Taiwan’s predominantly homeowner
society and who would be eligible to live in the social housing: Should social housing
only be offered to low-­income people or extended to a mixed-­income population?
In the search for examples, several international conferences, talks by foreign
experts, and news reports from foreign cities introduced the concept of social housing to
Taiwan. Unlike the previous process of globalizing Taipei, social housing was motivated
by the activist group SHAC, using a bottom-­up approach. The first international social
housing conference, held by SHAC in 2011, invited housing experts from six countries,
including the Netherlands, the USA, Denmark, Germany, Japan, and South Korea. These
housing experts not only shared their experiences of social housing, but their visit to
then-­President Ma Ying-­Jeou helped initiate a new housing direction (SHAC, 2020).
 FROM GLOBALIZING TAIPEI TO LEARNING AMSTERDAM 7

One year later, in 2012, SHAC held an international social housing conference
focused solely on the Dutch experience. This focus on the Dutch case can be explained
by several factors: First, the members of SHAC did not consider the cases presented by
the United States to be viable, and South Korea’s social housing, although closer to the
local context, was still in its infancy. Second, the Dutch delegation was eager to provide
information and share both positive and negative cases of social housing policy. The
examples of social housing in the Netherlands stood out not only because of their model
experience but also because of the substantial assistance offered by Dutch housing
experts. Finally, SHAC recognized the potential political impact of working with the
European Champion in social housing provision.
After the two housing conferences, Taiwan’s officials and activists made several
visits to Amsterdam in the 2010s as a result of the connections established during the
conference. The Amsterdam Federation of Housing Corporations, an interest group
consisting of all affiliated housing corporations in Amsterdam, was especially vital in
advising and acting as the main host for all international exchanges and field trips in the
Netherlands (SHAC, 2020).
Social housing development in Taiwan began as a learning process, assembling
different policies from the East Asian tigers, Japan, the US, France, Germany and the
Netherlands. SHAC used referencing tactically as a politicizing strategy to stimulate
a sense of political urgency. The fellow tigers, a source of constant competition and
comparison of each other, caused considerable political pressure, as Taiwan had the
lowest proportion of social housing among them. Amsterdam served as a particularly
important example for Taiwan, with its high proportion of social housing as part of the
total housing stock (40%). But there were also detractors. Most US-­trained housing
experts in Taiwan were initially against a social housing policy, because of its leading
to a concentration of poverty, according to the American public housing experience
(Chang, 2016). Housing economists in Taiwan argued that the government should not
provide social housing for low-­income households to prevent more responsibility and
a financial ‘burden’. In those debates, Dutch experts provided a counterexample of a
relatively universal provision of high-­quality housing, arguing that social housing is not
equal to a slum. The absence of stigmatization of social housing residents left a favorable
impression of the Dutch case compared to other countries’ systems. Its institutional and
financial arrangements convinced Taiwan’s government, scholars and activists working
on welfare reform in Taiwan that the Dutch model was feasible (Lin, 1994; Liu, 2015).
Ping-­Yi Lu, one of the organizers of SHAC, in an interview with the author on
8th July 2023, expressed the Dutch influence on social housing in Taiwan as follows:

The Dutch experience has two impacts: one is discourse, and the other is
helping social housing become part of housing policy … although the Dutch
model is different from Taiwan. Dutch experts constantly offer advice when
we have questions. They have assisted Taiwanese government officials on
study tours to the Netherlands, housing conferences in Taiwan and Europe,
and, through our introductions, many formal and informal meetings with high-­
level government officials such as different presidents, mayors and political
candidates in Taiwan. Their influence lies in the shaping of politics and housing
policy.

The Taipei City Government sponsored the first Dutch Housing Conference in
Taipei in 2012, and two mayors visited the Netherlands in 2011 and 2018, respectively.
Various Dutch institutions helped train key government officials in Taipei City in
2015, 2017 and 2019. In addition to these visits from high-­ranking officials, discussions
expanded beyond social housing alone and new learning topics were introduced,
including circular economy, social welfare, and river land acquisition. The Nangang
 CHEN AND RIETDIJK 8

Depot Public Housing development project, scheduled to be completed in 2024, will

integrate the concept of circular economy into the design.
Bruce Cheng, a senior engineer at the Taipei City Construction Management
Office before 2020, was responsible for implementing social housing projects. He
described the influence of the Dutch experience as strong, specifically mentioning
the impact of weekly Saturday morning special meetings with the social housing
construction team contributing to new ideas emerging from the project. For Bruce
Cheng, the Dutch influence was mainly conceptual, changing Taiwan’s dominant
discourse on housing as real estate and as a purely economic issue (interview with the
author, 8th September 2023):

The Dutch influence is that housing is not just housing, but a culture of living. It
brings with it the idea that beautiful architecture and mixed living can overcome
stigma … Taiwan was influenced by American planning, which viewed land as
capital and housing as a commodity. Europe regards the concept of housing as
a basic human right.

According to Bruce Cheng, SHAC played an active role in establishing this network to
assist the central and local governments. Where the Taiwanese government encountered
obstacles in developing official relations due to Taiwan’s diplomatic isolation, SHAC
succeeded in assembling a learning network.

— Amsterdam: the reference city

The Netherlands is a social housing model, with affordable housing available
to a large part of society (Scanlon et al., 2014). The roots of organized social housing
in the Netherlands can be traced back to the late nineteenth century when rapid
industrialization and urbanization caused deplorable housing conditions for the newly
emerging urban working class (Beekers, 2012). Overcrowding, unsanitary conditions
and unaffordable rents threatened not only the urban poor but also the elites that shared
the city’s spaces and resources. The first housing associations emerged in the 1880s as
private initiatives to provide decent and affordable homes for the less privileged in an
attempt to counteract the unhygienic living conditions (Stieber and Schoenauer, 1999;
Ekamper and van Poppel, 2019). In 1901, the Housing Act (Woningwet) was passed to
provide a comprehensive housing policy to be implemented nationally.
The interwar period can be described as the golden age of social housing in the
Netherlands. During these years, the ‘Amsterdam School’ architectural movement played a
significant role, creating iconic housing developments characterized by unique brickwork,
expressive designs and communal spaces (Beekers, 2012). These efforts reflected the
political sentiment at that time, with socialists in power in many cities. Workers, as the
backbone of the city, had to feel pride in their homes and neighborhoods, expressed
in designs that aimed to bring a sense of community and improve the quality of life
for residents. Even though these projects are still standing and are often referenced in
international media when discussing Dutch social housing, it is the postwar endeavor
that involved rebuilding one million houses within ten years and the subsequent growth
of social housing to account for 40% of the total housing stock at its highpoint in 1985
that gave the Netherlands its status as ‘social housing nation’ (Centraal Bureau voor de
Statistiek, 2021).
The ambitious plan of the Dutch government to rebuild the nation after the
destruction of the Second World War included the construction of mass social rental
housing projects. City neighborhoods were carefully planned to consist of various types
of housing catering to diverse socioeconomic backgrounds. This is how the Netherlands
got its universal social rental housing policy, which provided affordable housing not only
to disadvantaged groups but also to the Dutch population in general (Beekers, 2012).
 FROM GLOBALIZING TAIPEI TO LEARNING AMSTERDAM 9

Since the 1980s, neoliberalism has steadily eroded the social rental housing
system. The Dutch government experimented with privatizing housing cooperations,
promoting homeownership, and liberalizing the private rental market (Aalbers
et al., 2017). The underinvestment in constructing new social housing has resulted in
long waiting lists. Furthermore, under European legislation, the social rental housing
system turned away from its universal character towards a residual system, where social
housing only serves disadvantaged groups in society, such as disabled individuals and
households with the lowest incomes (Priemus and Gruis, 2011; Tasan-­Kok et al., 2013).
Nevertheless, the Netherlands remains at the top of the list of nations with significant
proportions of social housing and for providing well-­designed, affordable homes to its
citizens.

The mutation of social housing in Taiwan

Taiwan’s housing system is very different from the original social democratic
model of the Netherlands (see Table 1). First, Taiwan is a ‘homeowner society’ (Ronald
and Doling, 2012). In the years following the arrival of the Nationalists from China,
starting in 1949, housing policy was not a priority. As the Nationalists implemented
martial law and planned to launch a counterattack on mainland China, their stay in
Taiwan was meant to be only temporary (Mattlin, 2011; Fell, 2018). Thus, the construction
of other-­than-­basic shelters was deemed a waste of resources. The perception of housing
as a private matter added to the Taiwanese government’s laissez-­faire approach.
Taiwan’s developmental authoritarian government banned organized protests
before democratization. Its anti-­communist principles resulted in the absence of a
political left in Taiwan’s political spectrum. The upper classes did not have to address
housing unaffordability and housing shortages for lower-­ and middle-­income groups,
nor did society face an imminent threat from organized protests by the working class,
of the kind that broke out in Amsterdam at the end of the nineteenth century. Collective
actions ultimately drove policy reform after democratization in the late 1980s, especially
when house prices soared.
Housing in Taiwan is a highly privatized commodity (Yip and Chang, 2003;
Fleckenstein and Lee, 2017). Owning a house has long been considered the best solution
for each household to safeguard a stable life. This is also reflected in the traditional
idea that a man should own a house to be eligible to marry and start a family (Lin

TABLE 1 Comparison of Social Housing Policy Development in Amsterdam and Taipei

City

Amsterdam Taipei City

Housing system Social democratic social housing Developmental state homeowner
society
Politics Wide spectrum from right to left Right to center right
Origin Private initiative Social movements
Sense of urgency Housing shortage for the working class since Housing prices surge since 2005
industrialization and after the second world war
Present provider of social Housing corporations Central and local governments
housing
Present funding for social Housing corporations’ own equity and bank loans Central and local governments
housing
Percentage of social housing to 30% 2%
all housing stock in 2022
Target group Over time from selective to universal and back to Young and disadvantaged people
selective
Housing form Simple and modern Smart, green, modern, high-­rise
source: compiled by the authors.
 CHEN AND RIETDIJK 10

and Hsu, 2022). Among the four East Asian Tigers, Taiwan has the second highest
homeownership rate at 78.6% after Singapore (Ministry of the Interior, Department of
Household Registration, 2020). To maintain property-­based welfare, sustaining stable
or rising housing prices has been crucial for the Taiwanese government (Ronald and
Doling, 2012).
Housing speculation and high housing prices have been serious problems
in Taiwan due to the lack of effective intervention in the housing market. During
the first organized housing protest in 1989, organized by the Snail without Shells
Movement (Chen, 2011), the main participants were middle-­class residents demanding
homeownership (Hsiao and Liu, 1993). Social rental housing was not considered
until the establishment of the social housing movement in 2010. Home prices have
doubled since 2005, making already unaffordable housing even more expensive and
making homeownership an almost impossible dream for middle-­class people. The main
organizers of SHAC, which is made up of non-­government housing and social welfare
groups, have been working on identifying the several underlying root causes of the
absence of social housing in Taiwan.
There is no typical left–right divide in Taiwanese politics, and both majority
parties govern according to pro-­market principles (McAllister, 2016). However, the issue
of the housing system is not unanimously recognized by all political parties, especially
the two majority parties. The Nationalist Party’s (KMT) voter base is largely made
up of middle-­aged homeowners and their voters tend not to support continued high
investment in ‘housing for the poor’. Instead, social rental housing for young people
is favored as a bridge to eventual home ownership. The Democratic Progressive Party
(DPP) also hopes to gain votes from the younger generation because they know that
voters over 40 years old are characterized by voter stability and rarely change their
support for a certain party (Ho et al., 2013). This consensus made them make young
people their primary target group instead of disadvantaged people. Young people are also
the group most affected by housing speculation. The longest stay for a young person in
social housing is just six years. After constant debates, the proportion of disadvantaged
groups eventually increased from 10% to 40% of the population in a housing project,
with housing tenure increasing up to 12 years. Nevertheless, with the limited amount of
social housing, who is benefiting from social housing is still a contested issue.
Governments strongly lead the implementation and financing of social housing
in Taiwan from central to local levels. Social housing projects aim at providing high-­
quality housing, strategically located, and often next to transportation hubs. This is to
counteract negative images of poor communities and poor living conditions associated
with government-­initiated housing projects in the past. The social housing projects are
designed by famous Taiwanese architects and one Dutch architecture firm, Meccano,
with beautiful landscape designs, smart technology, plenty of public space, community
centers, and most with child and elderly daycare centers. To build a community, these
projects reserve certain units for young people to encourage them to be community
makers. Social housing is designed to promote a ‘new modern urban lifestyle’ and to
position Taipei as a modern city.
However, social housing is expensive due to construction costs and land prices.
Since the 1990s, the decade of Globalizing Taipei, large amounts of public land have
been privatized, and speculation has driven up land prices. To balance the budget,
central and local governments have emphasized fiscal sustainability and regarded rents
as the primary source of budgetary returns. Based on this principle, rental calculations
are based on discounts from market prices rather than affordability. This makes rents
too expensive, especially for low-­income households (Rietdijk, 2022). This high cost of
social housing has also slowed construction.
The implementation of Taiwan’s social housing policy corresponds with
Harloe’s (1995) theory on social housing as a transitional tenure, which aims to provide a
 FROM GLOBALIZING TAIPEI TO LEARNING AMSTERDAM 11

stable first tenure before households can find their way in the private rental or purchase
market. Thus, Taiwan’s adaptation of social rental housing is designed to solve a supply
and demand inconsistency in the rental market under the socio-­political structure of
a homeowner society. This policy carefully avoids challenging neoliberal ideology and
cultural values and does not require decisive intervention in the housing market. Social
housing construction will not cool down the housing market because social housing is
designed for a separate group of people, specifically those who cannot enter the home-­
buying market. Policies that could effectively curb speculation, such as property tax
increases, additional taxes on vacant housing, or homeowners with four or more houses,
are strongly resisted by the legislators. The current social housing policy is a balance
between political interests, homeowner interests, and social movement interests.
Affordable housing is carefully maneuvered on the political agenda, but neoliberal
ideology still dominates policymaking.

Amsterdam is merely an inspiration

How did the Taiwanese perceive Dutch social housing? Amsterdam’s role as a
reference city does not take the form of direct policy transfer, as their housing systems
are very different (see Table 1). Instead, it should be understood as providing a vision
to policymakers and politicians. Taiwan’s democratization allowed the concept of
social housing to be explored and brought it to the attention of politicians through
the housing movement’s lobbying and constant protests. After more than two decades
of democratization, civil society and social movements have continued to grow and
develop, gaining experience in coordination and lobbying and increasing their political
influence (Chen, 2019).
By embracing and studying the Dutch social housing case as a reference,
social activists and scholars in Taiwan have been able to present a solution to a
persistent problem in the Greater Taipei region, namely housing unaffordability in a
homeownership society. This concurs with Roy and Ong’s (2011) theory of worlding
cities, which states that the order of urban priorities can be rearranged through
transnational social interactions, and Peck and Theodore’s (2010) observation that
policy transfer depends on existing relations and the power to inspire, rather than just
the applicability of best practices.
Subsequently, the social housing movement created a sense of urgency that had
been absent in politics, government, and society. The grassroots movement managed
to ‘remap power’, as Ong (2011: 12) describes as the practice of worlding, by using the
strategies of transnational referencing by switching the previous global city model
towards Amsterdam’s model of social rental housing. ‘The desire to be global’ continues
to be the driver for seeking good models, where Amsterdam represents a modern
Western image and a social democratic system that Taiwan hopes to acquire.
The birth of social housing in Taiwan coincided with the decline of social
housing in many Western countries. The Netherlands still has the highest percentage
of social housing in the European Union, but that number has declined from 40% of the
national housing stock in 1985 to 30% in 2016 (Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek, 2021).
Nevertheless, affordable, adequate housing for all still exists in the original spirit of
Dutch housing, provoking the imagination of Taiwan’s policymakers, politicians and
society where private homeownership has so far been the only solution. The neoliberal
consequences of Dutch housing happened to offer the conditions that Taiwan’s
government is looking for: Financial self-­sustainability and less government. Dutch
social housing from the 1990s onward shifted from being government-­led towards
semi-­private housing corporations, which inspired Taiwan’s government to establish
similar institutions, the Housing and Urban Regeneration Centers, at the national and
local levels, even though these new centers in Taiwan rely on government funding. The
universal character of social housing for a mixed populace of low-­to middle-­income
 CHEN AND RIETDIJK 12

groups is used in Taiwan to mix young households with disadvantaged groups to avoid
stigmatization and the concentration of lower socio-­economic demographic groups.
Interestingly, the neoliberal trend in Dutch social housing has produced similar
social housing buildings to those in Taipei City. For example, in Amsterdam’s Zuidas,
the financial district with the headquarters of transnational firms, banks, law firms,
and high-­end luxury apartments, social housing development has recently been added
to the area’s development plans. The social housing should blend in with the modern,
futuristic architectural landscape that makes up the area. The first completed project
‘Ella’ comprises 58 apartments rented at the upper limit rent price for social housing
of 710 euros per month. As Amsterdam implements the income-­a djusted housing
allocation, these apartments will be distributed to households with an income close to
the median in the Netherlands. Several other social housing projects soon to be added
to the neighborhood, such as ‘Crossover’ and ‘Ravel’, will have 50% of their social
housing units allocated to tenants younger than 28 years old. Social housing corporation
De Key expressed the following: ‘Young graduates up until 28 years old can live in the
social housing for five years and build a strong professional network in the knowledge
community that Amsterdam Zuidas is’ (Nul20, 2021). Like Taipei, social housing for
middle-­to upper-­class young adults is the first step in their housing careers, whereas
working-­class individuals are not mentioned as potential tenants.
The selection of a reference city is highly dependent on the availability and
credibility of relations and the vision that the reference city can evoke among the actors
of the referring city. This concurs with Peck and Theodore (2010), who challenge the
idea that choices for reference cities occur systematically based on perfect information.
Instead, policy mobility relies heavily on existing relations, such as with the Amsterdam
Federation of Housing Corporations, and the overarching goal that the actors advancing
the policy want to achieve. Amsterdam, in a social democratic welfare state, is the
Western, global, and modern example for Taiwan to imagine and redirect urban
justification toward implementing social housing.

Conclusion
Referencing other cities has been used as a strategy for mobilizing urban
projects in Taiwan. After tracing the policy changes in Taipei City since the 1990s, this
research expands the global cities theory by arguing that geopolitical factors, alongside
economic crises, have been an important motive for Globalizing Taipei. Taipei has
employed city diplomacy strategies since the 1990s to mitigate Taiwan’s international
diplomatic isolation. This highlights how geopolitics influences the initiation of inter-­
referencing strategies, determines which cities are suitable for referencing and provides
justifications for urban development projects based on these references. The desire
to be global continues to be an underlying force in choosing a new learning model, as
demonstrated in Amsterdam’s social housing case. In the realms of global cities theory
and policy mobility, there has been limited exploration of geopolitical factors. Taiwan’s
unique international status amplifies the role of its cities in establishing and maintaining
international connections.
Taiwan’s urban development after democratization showed a change in
mobilization from a top-­down to a bottom-­up process. After more than two decades
of democratization, social organizations play a crucial role in mobilizing more equal
and anti-­capitalist models through bottom-­up processes. The city diplomacy strategy
adopted by the first elected DPP Taipei City Mayor was still a top-­d own process.
The subsequent neoliberal urban policies gave more power to private developers and
hence worsened housing speculation. However, the social housing movement in 2010,
representing the rise of civil organizations, switched urban development to a new model.
The bottom-­up forces successfully persuaded politicians and society of the urgency of
housing problems and social housing as the best solution by using Amsterdam’s social
 FROM GLOBALIZING TAIPEI TO LEARNING AMSTERDAM 13

housing policy as an imaginary vision. As such, democratization can be viewed as

contributing to opening up alternative ways of shifting policy through other than state
actors.
No matter whether it is Globalizing Taipei or Learning Amsterdam, the learning
processes are both selective. Taipei’s four urban mega projects did not include any
affordable housing, whereas the reference cases did. The mobilization and mutation of
Amsterdam’s social housing offers a comparison of the two housing systems and reveals
their vast differences in social, political, economic and cultural contexts, which results
in Amsterdam serving solely as an inspiration for Taipei City. The neoliberalization of
housing during the 1990s and 2000s in Amsterdam happened to provide the conditions
that Taipei City was looking for, such as financial sustainability and less government
involvement. This case demonstrates that policies fitting a neoliberal logic travel easier
over greater distances, and between places with very different local contexts.
The supply of social housing in Taiwan does not interfere with the interests of
homeowners and real estate developers. Therefore, its political risks are much smaller
than real estate market restructuring measures, such as housing tax reform. This shows
how neoliberalism interferes with local policy-­making, where political and economic
interests prevail over addressing the root of the problem in the housing market. Thus,
due to their neoliberal urban development paths, Amsterdam and Taipei both continue
to face the challenges of affordable housing shortages and housing justice.

Yi-­Ling Chen, School of Politics, Public Affairs and International Studies, University of
Wyoming, 1000 E. University Avenue, Laramie, WY 82071, USA, [email protected]

Chantalle Elisabeth Rietdijk, Program on Smart Sustainable Development and

Management, International College of Sustainability Innovations, National Taipei
University, No. 151, University Road, Sanxia District, New Taipei City, 237303,
Taiwan, [email protected]

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