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2016 CommonWealth Magazine Urban Innovation Summit - Mayor Cheng: Leverage Taoyuan’s advantages

Release date:2016-08-10

2016 CommonWealth Magazine Urban Innovation Summit - Mayor Cheng: Leverage Taoyuan’s advantages to create a global superstar

While attending the “2016 CommonWealth Magazine Urban Innovation Summit” held at the Taipei Shangri-La’s Far Eastern Plaza Hotel on July 26th, Taoyuan City Mayor Cheng Wen-Tsan gave a speech titled “Smart Taoyuan - The City Powering Taiwan’s Next-Gen Industrial Development” and held a conference with Shohei Fukui, a famous economic and regional development strategist from Japan. Mayor Cheng expressed that Taoyuan offers great potential for industrial development, making it the best choice for youths looking to settle down and pursue their careers. The Taoyuan City Government has continued to pursue major construction projects such as the Smart City and “Asia Silicon Valley Project” to leverage Taoyuan’s many advantages and transform the city into a key international location.

About 40 million people leave and arrive at Taoyuan International Airport every year, making it the leading international transportation hub in Taiwan. Its proximity to the Port of Taipei also created a “dual port effect” that provides great advantages to industrial development in Taoyuan. Taoyuan is also Taiwan’s largest manufacturing and logistics base with over 1,700 logistics companies, allowing it to serve as the logistics center in Northern Taiwan. Taoyuan has also attained the highest industrial output value (about NT$ 3.2 trillion) in the nation for 13 consecutive years. The city is home to comprehensive industrial clusters and has the most rapidly growing registration of factories and companies in Taiwan, providing immense potential for industrial development.

Mayor Cheng also mentioned that Taoyuan’s population is quite young with an average age of 37 years. The City also has the highest population growth with population increasing by 30,000 to 40,000 individuals per year. The percentage of people above 65 years of age, at just about 9% of the total population, is the lowest in Taiwan. Labor participation rate was 59%, which would be the highest throughout the country. Taoyuan is also home to 16 universities and colleges, making the City the best place for young people to go to and filling it with youthful energy.

Mayor Cheng pointed out that the new government has selected Taoyuan as the center for implementing the “Asia Silicon Valley Project” to promote IoT, Industry 4.0, and Smart City companies. Taoyuan’s many advantages and population of trained professionals allow the use of both “local and global perspectives” in order to generate the energy required for developing next-gen industries.
The Asia Silicon Valley Project is not just about hardware and buildings. One of the key elements would be the “Innovation Center” that acts as a platform for supporting startups, allowing small teams or individuals to unleash their creative potential and new technologies upon the platform. Major corporations or venture capitalists could also use the platform to provide assistance to creative ideas that have yet to mature to promote creative development.

For sustainable environment, Mayor Cheng expressed that the Taoyuan City Government has established an “Environment Pollution Monitoring Center” and installed real-time environment monitoring system. A total of 6 auditing offices were also established to carry out audits at any given notice. Average national response and dispatch time in response to petitions or reports of public pollution was 6.7 hours. Taoyuan aimed for a goal of 4 hours, employing smart pollution monitoring systems to reduce the urban impact caused by environment pollution. Due to industrial development, Taoyuan is a major power consumer and accounted for 13.6% of total energy used in Taiwan. However, Taoyuan also enjoys great efficiency in wind power generation and will continue to pursue wind power, offshore wind energy (OWE), and Smart Grid technologies. Taoyuan City Government has established solar power systems in 100 schools by installing rooftop solar power panels. Efforts have been made to develop floating solar power systems in the Solar Powered Pond project, helping to transform Taoyuan City as an ideal place for promoting solar power generation. The city government also provided a NT$ 23,000 subsidy to encourage people to replace obsolete two-stroke scooters with electric scooters, and established recharging stations to improve public convenience.

Mayor Cheng then added that Smart Cities should aim for improving public practicality and convenience so that citizens could easily acquire information about their immediate surroundings. Measures promoted by the Taoyuan City Government include Smart Lighting, Smart Parking, and “Smart Tours” of the 2016 Taiwan Lantern Festival, and “Smart Ballparks” used by the Taoyuan Lamigo Monkeys at the Taoyuan International Baseball Stadium. All these are examples of Smart City applications.

Mayor Cheng also shared his experiences in the “Setouchi Triennale 2016” international art festival during the official tour of Kagawa Prefecture in Japan. He believed that festivals and events could be integrated with tourism to promote the number of tourists. Taiwan could also learn from the Japanese experience and make festivals a part of local traditions in order to tourism in Taiwan.
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