Adaptive City – Design in Motion

Building a forward-looking city with design vision

“Adaptive City – Design in Motion” is Taipei City’s core appeal in hosting World Design Capital 2016. How can we apply innovative “design thinking” to overcome the constraints that limited resources place on our city’s development, to pursue continual renewal and change in our urban governance, to create happiness in the lives of our citizens, to bring citizens a better quality of life in a livable city, and to create a forward-looking city with design vision? These are the goals and directions that Taipei City is constantly thinking about and seeking progress toward.

Making “design thinking” a driver of urban development

The introduction of “design thinking” is an important tool in our urban transformation and planning.Design is not only about outward appearance, styling and aesthetics. It is also a systematic method of analyzing issues and solving problems. Old ways of thinking about policymaking and governance are no longer adequate to meet today’s challenges. In the future, we will need more cross-disciplinary dialogue to guide us in addressing the newly emerging challenges of urbanization and globalization. When design thinking is extended into the realm of urban planning and becomes deeply embedded in our city, it will become a power that nourishes our city and drives its development.

Facing up to four major development issues confronting Taipei

Within our WDC theme of “Adaptive City – Design in Motion,” the development issues that Taipei faces today can be distilled into four strands: “Life Quality and Health,” “Ecological Sustainability,” “Urban Regeneration” and “Smart Living.” As well as inviting passionate design professionals to take part in policymaking discussions, the city government is also putting on a series of courses in design thinking for city officials, in the hope that by embracing “social design” thinking, we can bring an innovative spirit to urban governance.

Citizen participation: Shaping a new model for urban development

We firmly believe that cultivating modern citizens who are able to solve problems and practice design thinking can be a driving force to promote a city’s continual readjustment and evolution. Through the spirit of “social design,” we hope to let design become truly embedded in citizens’ lives, and to enable all our citizens to become creative seeds for communities, schools, and business districts, and actively push forward urban innovation. Through the joint participation of designers, city residents, and experts from different fields, we aim to realize the vision of a better quality of life and to turn Taipei into a livable city and a new role model for urban development.