The Spatial Patterns and Development of the Sugar Industry Cities-Huwei and Sinying

Abstract

The sugar industry communities were developed extensively during Japanese colonial period (1895- 1945) in Taiwan. The planning of these communities was also based on the concepts of western industrial villages which connected to and interacted with the surrounding urban space. The communities significantly flourished or declined along with the rise and fall of the sugar industry. The sugar industry deeply influenced not only on the urban economy but also the urban architecture, space, and culture. During the Japanese colonial period, there were 44 modern sugar factories in Taiwan, and each was important to the development of the Taiwanese cities and townships. For this study, we chose the Huwei and Sinying sugar factories in Taiwan and their townships as samples in order to study the spatial interaction and the historical background between the sugar industry and urban space. The spatial patterns of these two samples will be analyzed and operated by urban grammars and illustrated as a tree diagram. Based on the methodology of shape grammar, the categories of urban grammars will be described in combination the urban plans in 1930s as well as in 2011. The purpose is to show the process of the urban spatial compositions of two sample towns, to provide the analyses of the patterns in the sugar industry cities and to understand the mutual relationship between the development of the sugar industry and the urban spaces.