During the Japanese Governance of Taiwan, a Modern European and American City Plan influence was brought to Taiwan. This not only changed Taiwan’s Chinese traditional Walled City style and community structure, but also established the foundation of Ping-Tung city’s construction and infrastructure today.
This research analyses the results Japanese colonial government city policies and strategies, from the early policies of hygiene requirements implemented as the “Central City Improvement”, to the later stages of the “City Plan” environment improvements. This analysis investigates the different periods of Ping-Tung city development, and investigates the Ping-Tung Plain in the period after Japanese colonial industrialisation. Factors such as the modern Sugar industry, Railway transport construction and Military establishment, assisted in increasing the momentum of development of the city.
This research, is divided into three main development periods of Ping-Tung city and architecture, each stage and development factors as described below:
1.The early developing period prior to 1913: Under governance of Holland, the Ming and Ching Dynasty, Ping-Tung city had a traditional style of agriculture society and community structure. But after Japanese government of Taiwan, the subsequence development of the modern Sugar industry and regional administrative centre’s which established the driving force of the city development.
2.The advanced development period from 1913 to 1937: During this period, the City Plan was implemented and combined with the relevant industries development, this period of Japanese governance was the peak of development in Ping-Tung city and architecture. This development became the city centre outline of today.
3.The Construction period from 1937 to 1945: After the Ping-Tung city implementation of the City Plan, soon announced the location of each public facilities, but due to the influence of the war mobilization, the city development mainly focused on the advantage of the transport development for the military movement. Other public facilities were not implemented by the Kuomintang Government until after the war, which has formed the foundation of Ping-Tung City facilities today.
Today the change of several factors have resulted in the slowing Ping-Tung city development. However the low intensity of development the city, and already developed industries such as Sugar and Brewery factories with large heritages of land, can from the ecological city point of view enable further progress and city development, which would become the future Ping-Tung city development direction.