Urban renewal politics comparison: Taiwan 🇹🇼 vs. Mainland China 🇨🇳 vs. SIngapore 🇸🇬

Caught up with my wushu teachers for the first time in 12 years. Great convo and learned a ton from them as usual.

The politics around urban renewal (都更，都市更新), where old dilapidated apartment buildings are torn down and replaced by new ones, fascinated me.

Singapore 🇸🇬:

You get compensated and have to move out within one year if the gov selects your building for renewal. They throw the books at you if you disagree. Things get done blazing fast, and you don't have a say. Top-down Lee Kuan Yew style, no nonsense.

Mainland China 🇨🇳:

A resident technically gets a say if he doesn't want his unit to be affected. The government "respects" the resident by allowing him to keep the old unit and building around it, keeping a tiny passageway for the tenant to enter/exit. Parking one's car by the unit becomes impossible, and selling becomes a headache since it is in such a undesirable state. So, if you choose to be stubborn, you can - but you'll pay a price.

Taiwan 🇹🇼:

If one single resident within a building rejects the renewal proposal, two things can happen:

1. That one nay outweighs all the yea's, and nothing gets done. Happens often in Taipei. This is what Nassim Taleb meant by "tyranny of the minority".

2. The government seeks creative solutions. It can hire gangsters to have a friendly chat with you. It can cut off the electrical wires to your house.. and take their sweet time to fix the issue, making your life very uncomfortable in the meantime. It can, while rebuilding surrounding buildings, ask the construction crew to hit one of your walls a bit harder.. basically destroying it while claiming the incident as an accident. A famous incident in Hualian (east Taiwan), where an old geezer refused renewal and told off the mafia, the gov burned his house down while he was out. And then purchased it for cheap, because it's just a plot of land without a functional house anymore.

So, in Taiwan, renewal either completely stalls because of one dissenter, or the city gov undertakes underhanded (criminal) measures to execute their plans.

In their attempt to make things fair and respecc hooman-rights, clown world ensues in Taiwan 😂

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