Taipei Parks Office Details Preliminary Plans for 110-Hectare Central Park on Songshan Airport Site
Why It MattersA city-level push to turn an operating urban airport into a mixed-use district shows how land value and local politics can put pressure on a general aviation and business jet gateway.
What happened
The Taipei Parks and Streetlights Office yesterday offered details on a transition plan for Taipei International Airport (Songshan airport). The plan was drawn up after Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) announced the proposal last month.
Chiang, who is in a competitive re-election race, announced at an Oct. 8 news conference that he wanted to close the airport and replace it with an "artificial intelligence (AI) park." The plan calls for the 300-hectare site to be redeveloped into a 100-hectare AI industry cluster, a 90-hectare residential area and a 110-hectare "Taipei Central Park" more than four times the size of an existing park used for comparison.
Yesterday, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei City Councilor Chin Huei-chu (秦慧珠) held a public hearing with representatives of several city departments. She sought clarification about the redevelopment plan Chiang presented to the city council on Oct. 21. Officials said the plan was compiled by the city's Department of Economic Development.
A parks office representative said that, given the park's scale, a feasibility study and preliminary planning would be needed before basic design. Based on preliminary plans, the park could include an agricultural zone with hands-on farming experiences.
Industry impact & what to watch
Proposals to repurpose an urban airfield sit in a recurring tension for business aviation. City-centre airports offer short ground transfers for executives and charter passengers, while the same land attracts housing, industry and green-space ambitions. Where the airport is operated for scheduled and general traffic alike, a closure decision affects every user at once, and the aircraft and operations displaced have to move to other fields.
In this case the process is still at an early stage. The parks office itself says a feasibility study and preliminary planning must come before basic design, so the park's contents and layout remain open. Operators and handlers based at Songshan have no stated closure date to plan around, and the proposal is tied to a re-election campaign, which adds political uncertainty to the timeline.
The signals worth following are the outcome of that feasibility study and any further city council hearings on the plan.
