The public works administration’s uprooting of trees along Zhongzheng Road has been a mini-controversy for a few months. The city removed the old trees to make way for the underground construction of a new MRT train line. The city also said the trees were sick.

The section of the road affected by the tree removal is an area I know pretty well. Pre-COVID, I would be there regularly. I happened to find myself there last night for a dinner event, and it was a strangely disorienting experience. Bare of the lovely trees, the road had been reduced to its ugly concrete roots, and stepping out of the restaurant, I could not figure out where I was or which way to go.

The new reality is both saddening and enraging at the same time. If I were a resident of the area, the removal action would miff me. For suddenly, my lovely neighborhood looked like any old, dilapidated concrete shit hole in Taiwan.

I cannot help thinking that the city officials at some deep level must hate themselves to cancel out one of the success stories over the decades. Whoever planted them there (and around the city for that matter) both beautified and preserved a bit of green in a typical Concrete Urban Monster. The “developmental” mindset of “the more concrete, the better” has been the practical urban planning and economic development tool for decades. Taiwan and Taipei have also spent large sums on vanity architecture projects that were never completed or proved too complex for local firms to deliver. But these trees were a success.

Source: PeoPo Citizen Journalism 公民新聞

The news report highlights how citizens and officials can meet, explain, and discuss these issues. For me, it drives home that we need citizen journalism more than ever all over the U.S. as a countervailing force to corporate media and as a curative to the “QAnon” conspiratorial lines of communication fracturing the body politic and destroying the country. Reconnecting national news to its roots locally would help people understand each other and motivate them to seek truth and positive action for change.

MSD