[SSPM] 12/02 Interview policy makers in Kaohsiung Cityhall

Develop an operationalisation of the concept industrial ecology that can be used in a research for interviewing policy makers.

The Kaohsiung city

I would like to use Kaohsiung eco-city project as a case study to develop my assignment.

Kaohsiung area is the second largest city in south part of Taiwan. The population is 2.7 million [PopulationData] and more than one third of jobs are related in the industrial parks. The high pollution from the industries already resulted in problems for some local communities [CY Yang , Respiratory]. Also, because the city is the economic core in the south it attracts immigrant workers come from the rest of south Taiwan. Nevertheless, the growing population needs more effective policy and infrastructure to maintain the operation in the city. Otherwise, it would be too chaotic and full of problems ranging from communication, parking, and air pollution.

The Kaohsiung city government has an eco-city project in order to achieve the balance between the economic growth and the environmental protection [Project]. In the green transportation, they already set up a public bike system and operate fuel cell bus. They also support solar thermal heaters, increase the park rates in the city, and improve the energy efficiency in the industrial parks. In the current phase, they have designed the indicator to guide the eco-city strategies. In the future, they plan to become the excellent examples of the eco-city in Taiwan.

The Kaohsiung eco-city project

The project has three elements. The indicator/purple interacts with the strategies/green, and the resulted/red comes from the changes in the city.

I propose to make a question list for the policy makers in the city hall in order to understand what is their current concept of the eco-city.

Question list (the sentences in the quote are the purpose of the question in my mind)

To analyze the current situation (to realize how did the decision maker look at the city)

· How long did they plan for the project? What kind static information did they choose? Can they draw a sketch to describe the major activities in the cities? Did they visit any eco-cities in Taiwan or Asian and what did they learn from them? (What kind of analytic method do they use in order to build the eco-city?)

· Who are the team members for the project and in what kind of backgrounds do they have, such as engineers, sociologists, or scientist? How do they work together? (This question is more to ask the members in the team with the decision making power.)

· Did they consider the problem already existed in the past year or 5 years? What is the geographical border of the project? (What is the boundary they set up and why?)

· What kind of problems is hard to quantify for them and how did they describe them in the project? (What are the assumptions in the analytic methodology?)

· What are the important problems they discover in this area and how big is it compared to the others, and what is the reduction or prevention strategy?

Solutions for the city

· What are the possible solutions to achieve these goals? How do they think the solution would work ?

· To set up the indicator on the sector, transportation, business, and living, what is the goal they want to achieve by the indicators?

· For them, what does the eco-city look like? Which city they know existed is close to the ideal eco-city? What is their imagination for the eco-city?

· After 1 and 5 years, if they still stay in the Kaohsiung city, what kind of transportation, landscape, major economy in the city do they expect to achieve?

Reference

1. populationdata.net link

2. CY Yang, etc. Respiratory and irritant health effects of a population living in a petrochemical-polluted area in Taiwan. Environmental research. Volume 74, issue2, p 145-149.

3. Kaohsiung eco-city project link