Walking in Colonial Taiwan: A Study on Urban Modernization of Taipei, 1895-1945

Abstract

This study focuses on the spatial transformation of Taipei in colonial Taiwan from 1895-1945, and draws attention to the relationships of the following terms: the colonizer, the colonized and the urban form. The article consists of three main sections: introduction of current scholarship and major debate; discussion on the theories in relation to space and body; Taipei as a case study in light of "city-as-text" and "text-as-city" contributed by both the colonizer and the colonized subjects. The purpose of this article is to probe and to discover whether the construction of such a colonial modernity in Taiwan was a process not anticipated by its contemporary colonized subjects.