Military dependents' village
Encyclopedia
A military dependents' village is a community in Taiwan
built in the late 1940s and the 1950s whose original purpose was to serve as provisional housing for Nationalist
soldiers and their dependents from mainland China
after the KMT retreated to Taiwan. They ended up becoming permanent settlements, forming distinct cultures as enclaves of mainlanders in Taiwanese cities. Over the years, many military dependents' villages have suffered from uban problems such as housing dereliction, abandonment, urban decay
, and urban slum
.
The houses in these villages were often haphazardly and poorly constructed, having been built hastily and with limited funding. The residents had no private land ownership rights for the houses they lived in, as the land was government property.
In the 1990s, the government began an aggressive program of demolishing these villages and replacing them with highrises, giving the residents rights to live in the new apartments. As of late 2006, there are around 170 left out of an original number of 879, and there are efforts to preserve some as historic sites.
, are built with minimal building standards on public land. The very common properties were built with straw-laid roof and mud-consolidated bamboo wall. It was only after the 1960s that the military reconstructed properties with bricks; and at the same time incorporated private toilets, bathrooms, kitchens, main pillars, roof tiles and electrical circuits into the properties. Till this, the properties of the Dependents Village had finally reached the same standards aligning with the rest of the architectures in Taiwan. By the end of 1970s, Taiwan’s property market was heated up with tremendous amount of newly-built and renovated properties. However, due to housing ownership problems, houses in the Dependents Villages could not been rebuilt and replaced. Most of them suffered from outdated facilities and crowdedness. Each house had only 6-10 ping (1 ping ~= 3.3 square metre) excluded the attached garden. Hence brick construction or reinforced brick-built, low level Juan Cun properties had been comparatively derelict, especially within inner urban area.
Generally speaking, Juan Cun from ten to hundreds of units tend to segregate themselves from the rest of the society. Although it tightened the relationship within the village, it had unavoidably prevented mingling and communications between the tenants and the rest of the communities outside.
Dependents' Villages is a unique cultural landscape that may soon pass into oblivion, as old soldiers pass away and urban renewal
and redevelopment takes place.
(KMT) military and their families. The impact to the society in terms of social segregation and imbalance resource allocation has turn out to be more revolted than expected.
Juan Cun has now been the focus of dynamic architectural, political and cultural debate shaped by tensions between different collective memories as well as conflicting interests and visions of what the new urban landscape of 'new' Taiwan should be. G. Delanty and P. R. Jones's discourse (2002)about continuous debates and struggles as to which memories and symbols are to be preserved or destroyed from the urban landscape of the city can be clearly realized in the context of Juan Cun and its preservation.
Taiwan
Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...
built in the late 1940s and the 1950s whose original purpose was to serve as provisional housing for Nationalist
Kuomintang
The Kuomintang of China , sometimes romanized as Guomindang via the Pinyin transcription system or GMD for short, and translated as the Chinese Nationalist Party is a founding and ruling political party of the Republic of China . Its guiding ideology is the Three Principles of the People, espoused...
soldiers and their dependents from mainland China
Mainland China
Mainland China, the Chinese mainland or simply the mainland, is a geopolitical term that refers to the area under the jurisdiction of the People's Republic of China . According to the Taipei-based Mainland Affairs Council, the term excludes the PRC Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and...
after the KMT retreated to Taiwan. They ended up becoming permanent settlements, forming distinct cultures as enclaves of mainlanders in Taiwanese cities. Over the years, many military dependents' villages have suffered from uban problems such as housing dereliction, abandonment, urban decay
Urban decay
Urban decay is the process whereby a previously functioning city, or part of a city, falls into disrepair and decrepitude...
, and urban slum
Slum
A slum, as defined by United Nations agency UN-HABITAT, is a run-down area of a city characterized by substandard housing and squalor and lacking in tenure security. According to the United Nations, the percentage of urban dwellers living in slums decreased from 47 percent to 37 percent in the...
.
The houses in these villages were often haphazardly and poorly constructed, having been built hastily and with limited funding. The residents had no private land ownership rights for the houses they lived in, as the land was government property.
Architecture
In the 1950s, most Dependents' Villages, except the legacy from the Japanese colonizationTaiwan under Japanese rule
Between 1895 and 1945, Taiwan was a dependency of the Empire of Japan. The expansion into Taiwan was a part of Imperial Japan's general policy of southward expansion during the late 19th century....
, are built with minimal building standards on public land. The very common properties were built with straw-laid roof and mud-consolidated bamboo wall. It was only after the 1960s that the military reconstructed properties with bricks; and at the same time incorporated private toilets, bathrooms, kitchens, main pillars, roof tiles and electrical circuits into the properties. Till this, the properties of the Dependents Village had finally reached the same standards aligning with the rest of the architectures in Taiwan. By the end of 1970s, Taiwan’s property market was heated up with tremendous amount of newly-built and renovated properties. However, due to housing ownership problems, houses in the Dependents Villages could not been rebuilt and replaced. Most of them suffered from outdated facilities and crowdedness. Each house had only 6-10 ping (1 ping ~= 3.3 square metre) excluded the attached garden. Hence brick construction or reinforced brick-built, low level Juan Cun properties had been comparatively derelict, especially within inner urban area.
Generally speaking, Juan Cun from ten to hundreds of units tend to segregate themselves from the rest of the society. Although it tightened the relationship within the village, it had unavoidably prevented mingling and communications between the tenants and the rest of the communities outside.
Dependents' Villages is a unique cultural landscape that may soon pass into oblivion, as old soldiers pass away and urban renewal
Urban renewal
Urban renewal is a program of land redevelopment in areas of moderate to high density urban land use. Renewal has had both successes and failures. Its modern incarnation began in the late 19th century in developed nations and experienced an intense phase in the late 1940s – under the rubric of...
and redevelopment takes place.
Urban Debates
Juan Cun is a burdened landscape inherited from the Martial Law Era (1949–1987)in Taiwan. It has been seen as an unfair welfare provision that was predominately available to the KuomintangKuomintang
The Kuomintang of China , sometimes romanized as Guomindang via the Pinyin transcription system or GMD for short, and translated as the Chinese Nationalist Party is a founding and ruling political party of the Republic of China . Its guiding ideology is the Three Principles of the People, espoused...
(KMT) military and their families. The impact to the society in terms of social segregation and imbalance resource allocation has turn out to be more revolted than expected.
Juan Cun has now been the focus of dynamic architectural, political and cultural debate shaped by tensions between different collective memories as well as conflicting interests and visions of what the new urban landscape of 'new' Taiwan should be. G. Delanty and P. R. Jones's discourse (2002)about continuous debates and struggles as to which memories and symbols are to be preserved or destroyed from the urban landscape of the city can be clearly realized in the context of Juan Cun and its preservation.
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