Blue Magpie TEAgriculture: Eco-tea Cultivation and Participatory Farming in Pinglin Satoyama, Taiwan

AbstractThe Blue Magpie TEAgriculture is the collaboration between the Chinese Wild Bird Federation and the Graduate Institute of Building and Planning at National Taiwan University. To challenge the mono-production tea cultivation landscape in Pinglin, since 2011, we apply the participatory farming and eco-tea cultivation to the Pinglin Satoyama. Satoyama refers to how people manage foothill ecosystems around their home villages. Up to date, the dominant satoyama actions are focusing on rice-paddy landscapes in small towns, peri-urban areas, and rural villages. Instead of rice-paddy satoyama, our Blue Magpie TEAgriculture experiment the equally critical Chinese cultural landscape, tea cultivations

Place-based Learning and Change of Sense of Place: Educational program in a historic town

Daxi is a famous historical town of north Taiwan, because of the preservation of the historic buildings of streets. It began to build the home identity of the locals from the 1990s. By the community participation shown the ancient culture of the town successfully, it became an attractive place for the tourism in Taiwan during the recent ten years. While the industry and lifestyle in the town are changing, it has a bearing on the power of the community groups. The life in the town is not convenient and low quality. Young people were left to work outside the community, and the social relation is to harden into stone. By the time goes on, the sense of place is changing to reconstruct the “Local.” While the industry changed, the culture is much different from the traditional, and the young people have a different dream of their home community. We found some alienated feeling in young people of the town from the workshop discussion of the “Dasi-field school”.However, in recent three years, the eco-museum project by participating with the local people, and it stimulated some learning programs in the community. In these two years, some young people would like to stay in the community and have some creative businesses. The occurrence of educational activities facilitates the translation of local knowledge. Through this study, we tried to understand if local people's sense of place was changed, as well as young people's identity of community life.In this action research, firstly, we had data analysis about the community learning-landscape of the community. Finally, we want to discuss how learning programs make sense of the neighborhood change and flow. Based on experiential research, we came up with a learning landscape model, in an attempt to construct the interactive relation between learning and community identity. Furthermore, we presented a new partner relation between community development and the design of educational courses

Can City Lifestyle be a Catalyst for Smart Suburban Change?

The research investigates how Asian and Latino immigrants’ prior urban experiences can inform the future planning and growth of suburban communities in Maryland. The investigation of Maryland immigrants’ various built environment (dwelling, landscape, neighborhood, transportation mode) preferences will result in a set of ecologically appropriate and culturally sensitive design guidelines that will help shape the future of the rapidly growing suburban communities.National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education; Department of Natural Resoruce Sciences and Landscape Architectur

Around the Table of the Golden Triangle: Food Connections and Community Networking from Burma to Taiwan

AbstractThis paper examines how exotic cuisines become the mechanism glue different ethnic groups together and enhanced the quality of community life in the so-called Golden Triangle in the Longgang area of Taoyuan, Taiwan. The Golden Triangle Longgang has been famous for its cultural diversities, especially the numbers of the exotic restaurants, including Burma cuisines, Hakka cuisines, Taiwanese cuisines, Chinese Mainlanders’ cuisines, Islamic cuisines and so on. In this paper, the research particularly investigates the relationships between the Burma cuisines and the quality of community life within the Burma-Chinese ethnic groups

Social Designing Edible Community Networks: Longtan, Taoyuan, Taiwan

Based on action research methods in between peri-urban and rural communities of Longtan region in Taoyuan Taiwan, the object of our paper is to investigate how to reconnect lives and landscapes to revitalize small towns and shrinking rural villages by cultivating edible community networks. We define edible community networks as social designing local food to connect three major domains: autonomous processes, environmental friendly economies, and cross-cultural landscape identities. The findings of our research suggest that food imbody social relationships as well as economic connections. Rural revitalizations could be established via integrating food connections among urban consumers, farmers, and community groups.

Blue Water, Green Tea: Socio-innovation, Taiwan

The research experiments how to revitalize a very depressed Pinglin within the eco-protected Taipei Water Special Area in the peri-urban Taiwan. Based on action research rooted in social innovation, the team develops ecological-oriented strategies to revitalize Pinglin area. Three socio-ecological innovative strategies include (1) product: eco-friendly fair-trade Blue Magpie Tea, (2) process: eco-tea tourism, (3) promise: eco-tea farmers’ children tutoring. Branding the eco-friendly “Blue Magpie Tea” has inspired the young coffee drinkers to taste tea. All actions help rebuild Pinglin’s identity as an eco-tea country.2398-4279 © 2016. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK.. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia.Keywords: Social innovation; tea landscape; peri-urban; Taiwa

Participatory Agricultural Humanities for the new Ruralism Tea-Community Revitalization In Taiwan

This paper examines the most effective ways of engaging urban citizens to appreciate rural villages and agriculture traditions. Pondering on experiences of rural revitalization experiments in Asian societies, this paper proposes the concept of “participatory agricultural humanities.” Participatory agricultural humanities are tools and processes engaging citizens into eco-friendly farming and land related works or events. Based on action research and qualitative research methods, we have been working with peri-urban and rural communities in Taiwan since 2009. Only embracing agricultural humanities as our values, we could re-establish eco-friendly rural developments with biodiversity and cultural diversity as a whole.© 2016. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia.Keywords: agricultural humanities, rural revitalization, participation, new ruralis

Recovering Rural Economies: Two cases in Taiwan

This paper concerns how rural villages recover their declining local economies based on two case studies in Taiwan, namely, the liquor industry in Sinyi, Nantou, and eco-friendly tea industry in Pinglin, New Taipei. Specifically, we study the processes through which rural villages managed to build new or transform old agricultural activities under different sectoral and local contexts, and, particularly, examine the roles of institutional actors, such as farmers associations and universities, in facilitating the recovery processes.Keywords: rural economy, farmers association, university, Taiwan.eISSN 2398-4279© 2017 The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia

Can City Lifestyle be a Catalyst for Smart Suburban Change?: A Comparative Investigation into How Asian and Latino Immigrants' Prior Urban Experiences and American's Prior Suburban Experiences Can Inform the Future Planning and Growth of Maryland Suburbs

The research investigates how Asian and Latino immigrants’ prior urban experiences can inform the future planning and growth of suburban communities in Maryland. The investigation of Maryland immigrants’ various built environment (dwelling, landscape, neighborhood, transportation mode) preferences will result in a set of ecologically appropriate and culturally sensitive design guidelines that will help shape the future of the rapidly growing suburban communities

Food Connection for Golden Triangle, Taiwan

This paper examines how exotic cuisines become the mechanism glue different ethnic groups together and enhanced the quality of community life in the so-called Golden Triangle in the Longgang area of Taoyuan, Taiwan. The Golden Triangle Longgang has been famous for its cultural diversities, especially the numbers of the exotic restaurants, including Burma cuisines, Hakka cuisines, Taiwanese cuisines, Chinese Mainlanders’ cuisines, Islamic cuisines and so on. In this paper, the research particularly investigates the relationships between the Burma cuisines and the quality of community life within the Burma-Chinese ethnic groups.Keywords: food;ethnic food;diaspora; IdentityeISSN: 2398-4279 © 2017. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open-access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia