Taichung Mayor Chia-lung Lin led a delegation to Hôtel de Ville on the 22nd to visit Paris’ Deputy Mayor Pénélope Komitès and the urban planning team, where both parties exchanged experiences in smart city, sustainable development, greenification and innovative entrepreneurship. Mayor Lin commended Paris’ “people-oriented” philosophy in generating sustainable urban development and launching innovative policies within the old urban structure, so that the citizens can enjoy smart living. Mayor Lin expressed that this is something that Taichung City can borrow and learn from, and he also invited Paris to participate in the 2018 Taichung World Flora Expo in an effort to foster more cooperation opportunities.
Paris’ Deputy Mayor Pénélope Komitès first shared the city’s experience in urban greenification. She suggested that Paris is actively promoting urban greenification and introducing agricultural ecology to the city, so that children can appreciate and recognize the importance of protecting the natural environment. The government has also issued licenses to encourage the citizens to partake in greenification by creating their own gardens or vegetable farms on rooftops. This not only helps to build a low carbon city but also imperceptibly increases community interaction and public participation among citizens.
Mayor Lin praised Paris’ urban greenification strategy and said that it is something that Taichung City can borrow and learn from. He commented, the city government is actively promoting the planting 1 million trees in 8 years project, with over 300,000 trees planted already. At the same time, the city government also takes the Paris Agreement into consideration to formulate its own self-governing regulations in promoting low carbon city, greenification of vacant lots and encouraging the citizens to grow plants on rooftops in support of the green movement. Consequently, Taichung’s philosophy of environmental and ecological protection matches that of Paris, and these achievements will be reflected on Taichung World Flora Expo next year.
According to Mayor Lin, since the discovery of endangered leopard cats in Houli in 2014, the city government has decided to use the opportunity to promote conservation, therefore the Houli exhibition area was reduced to preserve space for the leopard cats, while two locations (Waipu and Fengyuan) were added to make up for the diminished flora exhibition area in Houli. The concept combining ecology, production and living received acknowledgment from the International Association of Horticultural Producers (AIPH), which upgraded the “Taichung International Flora Exposition” to “Taichung World Flora Exposition”. Mayor Lin extended his invitation to Paris to attend the world flora expo in Taichung next year.
In terms of urban innovation, Directeur de l'attractivité et de l'emploi Jean-Baptiste Delapierre pointed out that France continues to launch incubation centers nationwide, with 130,000 m2 of shared work space created in Paris alone, dedicated to the training of talents in diverse disciplines, including arts, cultural innovation, tourism, hardware equipment or biomedicine. In addition, the Paris city government subsidizes up to € 30,000 for an average of 200 emerging start-ups every year to cultivate numerous outstanding enterprises.
Sabine Romon, responsible for the "Smart and Sustainable City Mission", stated that Paris is utilizing a variety of digital innovation tools to promote 3 major philosophies: “open city”, “smart connection” and “sustainable city”. In particular, “open city” involves the creation of a crowd interaction platform and online voting mechanism to foster public participation; “smart connection” involves establishing “citizen digital accounts” for the collection of Big Data and provision of public service to the citizens; “sustainable city” involves policies such as creating EV charging stations, bikeways, planting trees or limiting the use of plastics in an effort to promote green city.
Mayor Lin commented that “The key to the success of urban regeneration lies in preserving the old while introducing the new!” Urban transformation for each city is unique, and new elements must be introduced to existing history and culture. Mayor Lin commended Paris’ endeavors in generating sustainable urban development based on the philosophy of “people-orientation”.
Mayor Lin suggested that in promoting smart city, Paris has not only built new infrastructure but also launched innovative policies within the city’s old infrastructure to let citizens enjoy smart living. Since Paris is already a green city, it is hoped that its transformation into a low carbon city will be expedited through public participation.
Furthermore, various entrepreneurial hubs have been created throughout Paris along with entrepreneurship counseling and incentives offered by the government to facilitate a positive cycle for the city’s economy via innovative, thriving developments, thereby successfully transforming the city. These are valuable lessons that Taichung City can learn from.
Mayor Lin also mentioned that in addition to old town area, Taichung also features new redevelopment zones. The city government is promoting the “Greater Taichung 123” program, which involves building a Yamanote Line, 2 international ports and 3 sub-city centers in order to connect pedestrian traffic and logistics by stitching new transport networks into the existing ones. In turn, this will generate overall developments in Greater Taichung, which coincides with the Grand Paris project currently being implemented, involving kick-starting developments in surrounding towns via transport network.