Notes from Central Taiwan: What Taipei owes Songshan Airport

Renewed calls to redevelop the airport overlook a question: have its building restrictions helped preserve a more human-scale city?

• By Michael Turton / Contributing reporter

• • Add TT as Preferred Source

  • 

  • 

  • 

The Han Kuang exercises in August simulated the repelling of attackers from the People’s Republic of China (PRC). One scenario saw the PRC seizing Taipei International Airport (Songshan airport) in a daring helicopter assault. The airport is a key military operations center, and its seizure or destruction in a PRC invasion would be inevitable. Yet that is hardly the only conflict involving Songshan.

Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an’s (蔣萬安) recent, surprising suggestion that the airport be converted to an AI park is just the latest variation on an old theme. Replacing Songshan airport with some kind of green or park space is an idea regularly rediscovered by Taipei politicians.

When Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) politician Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) was mayor of Taipei, he made noises in 1994 about relocating Songshan. In 2002, DPP candidate for Taipei mayor, Lee Ying-yuan (李應元), proposed removing the airport and using it as green space. The 2006 DPP mayoral candidate Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) made a similar proposal. Famed hotelier Stanley Yen (嚴長壽) in 2009 argued for shutting down Songshan. In the mid-2010s then-Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) repeatedly called for discussions on moving or eliminating the airport, including convening a 2015 forum on its future. In 2018 all three major candidates for Taipei mayor supported some form of relocation and urban renewal for the airport.

Vivian Huang (黃珊珊), then Taipei deputy mayor, in 2022 also proposed the relocation of Songshan airport when running for mayor. Her argument was that the airport caused transportation problems for Neihu District (內湖), one of the ways it shapes the city’s built environment. Under her plan, relocation would free up development space, increasing transportation across the Keelung River and relieving traffic pressure in Neihu.

In the same year, DPP candidate Enoch Wu (吳怡農), running in a by-election for Chiang Wan-an’s old legislative seat, called for replacing the airport with green space. Chiang at the time called Wu’s proposal a “hasty election promise.” As current DPP Taipei mayoral candidate Puma Shen (沈伯洋) asked after Chiang made the AI park plan: “What changed?” For years, removing Songshan airport has mostly been a proposal from the DPP. Perhaps Chiang took it up thinking to appeal to green voters.

The reason for the eternal recurrence of this idea is the effect the airport has on property development. First, its presence pushes down property values in nearby areas. Second, it represents a coherent and discrete 200-300 hectare chunk of land ripe for planned development in a city full of fragmented parcels of land that are often cumbersome for developers to work with. Third, as Civil Aeronautics Administration maps show, the airport necessitates strict height regulations on buildings for a total of 3,000 hectares in the city around it. This zone extends 31kms from east to west and 12kms from north to south at its widest point, but the restrictions are greatest within 3km of the runway.

The developmentalist fantasy of removing the airport was well described by Yen in 2009. He said that with the airport gone, its height restrictions would disappear. The shorter buildings in the area would then be rebuilt as skyscrapers. Yen added that this would attract world-class developers to invest in construction in Taiwan. It goes without saying that freeing up all that space, and space for development in the city, would make developers endlessly wealthy while creating new opportunities for graft among public officials.

This is bluntly laid out in a spate of articles responding to Chiang Wan-an’s sudden suggestion. A spokesperson for a local housing magazine quoted in a United Daily News (UDN) piece on Oct. 9 pointed out that after the lifting of flight restrictions and noise pollution, older residences in Minsheng Community would undergo urban renewal, and residences with prices exceeding NT$2 million per ping would be constructed along major thruways like Dunbei and Minsheng roads.

An Oct. 11 piece in UDN extensively quoted Shining Building Group (鄉林集團) Chairman Lai Cheng-yi (賴正鎰). Lai cited his experience with removing and redeveloping Shuinan Airport (水湳機場) in western Taichung two decades ago when he was chairman of the Taichung Chamber of Commerce, saying that the removal laid the foundation for the next 30 years of the city’s development.

Similarly, a China Times report on Oct. 12 lays out the way removing the airport would not only reshape the city, but necessitate reshaping it. For example, the airport is currently serviced by the Wenhu MRT line and city buses. Were an AI park to go in, it is likely new MRT and other public transportation facilities would be needed. The noise and height restrictions most prominently affect areas around Minzu Road, and Songshan (松山), Zhongshan (中山) and Datong (大同) districts, according to expert analysis in the article. These areas will boom. By lowering property values around its perimeter, Songshan airport has created a zone of older buildings that developers have no interest in upgrading. Once the airport is gone, all that will change. If that part of the city undergoes a property boom, it may also need new transportation services.

Developers are cautiously taking a believe-it-when-I-see-it attitude, but there is no question that they are licking their chops at the thought of that enormous chunk of land coming free, and the restrictions it imposes on property values and nearby building heights disappearing.

Over the years these restrictions have been softened. Until 2007, for example, buildings within a 3km radius of the runway were limited to 60 meters in height, but that year the height limit was raised to 90 meters. Restrictions have been further relaxed to encourage urban renewal programs.

Numerous reasons have been given during discussions of the airport’s fate for the inability to relocate Songshan. It handles flights to the offshore islands and, for medivacs arriving from the islands, it is close to major hospitals. It is not only a military base, but also hosts search and rescue units for northern Taiwan. Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport would need extensive upgrades and changes to handle the increased domestic traffic. Further, Taoyuan airport planners have explained that its current development program does not take into account absorbing Songshan’s traffic.

Few point to the airport’s shaping effect on the built environment of Taipei as a reason to keep it there. Yet, in its current incarnation, the very “problems” of the airport are its chief advantages: it suppresses property values and building heights, creating more pleasant areas of small buildings that have less traffic and more accessible neighborhood services.

In fact, it would appear that we owe Songshan airport a very great debt for helping to keep Taipei built to a human scale.

Notes from Central Taiwan is a column written by long-term resident Michael Turton, who provides incisive commentary informed by three decades of living in and writing about his adoptive country. The views expressed here are his own.