Tainan’s political and colonial history parallels and mirrors the arc of its urban form, in its presence and erasure. When the Dutch planted their colonial ambition establishing the “New Amsterdam” in Manhattan during the early 1600s, halfway around the world, they were building another colonial outpost: “Fort Zeelandia” in southern Taiwan. The city’s parallel stories reveal a striking pattern of early globalization, conquest, and political intermingling across continents.
Fort Zeelandia, or the port area of present-day “Anping” faced continual transformation when under the Qing dynasty, an extensive city boundary was constructed, shaping the city core as it exists today. These fortified walls, however, were deemed anti-modern by the Japanese rulers, who subsequently “de-fortified” it. In their place, they introduced symbols of Modernity, including Huassmann-style boulevards and a rail system demarcating new boundaries in the newly formed urban landscape. Following the Second World War, Tainan’s urban form continued to transform, this time under the regime of the Nationalist government, which seized control of Taiwan after 1949. The layered history can be found in the city’s overlapping street patterns, sometimes radial, occasionally gridded, at times organic; while it is oftentimes, taking an indescribable urban form.
Today, just as luxury condominiums in Manhattan rise, towering over the Commissioners' Plan as speculative investment tools, similar phenomena can be observed in Tainan, albeit with a different form and characteristic. While New York City’s luxury flats are distinguished by their premium addresses and star architects, 111 West 57th Street (SHoP Architects), 220 Central Park South (Robert A. M. Stern), 432 Park Avenue (Rafael Viñoly), and One57 (Christian de Portzamparc), condominium billboards in Tainan are characterized instead by pastiche names drawn from fables or whimsical, nonsensical literary slogans. While New York City’s luxury condominiums are tied to the global oligarchy, Tainan’s booming property market is also not without its global entanglements.
Mapping of billboard broadcasting locations in Central West District denotes how they are strategically positioned at the main roads, intersections and roundabouts. The central part of the map indicates billboard location juxtaposing against the district’s figure ground, highlighting the palimpsest of Tainan’s urban morphology.