Photo courtesy of Tainan City Government The Healthy Cities program seeks harmony among people, the environment and society.

By Ma Kang-yao
Taiwan News,Supplement Reporter
Photos Courtesy of DOH

The Healthy City standards are set up by the WHO to determine if a city pays attention to its people's health. WHO made a list of 32 indicators for a Healthy City.

Based on those conditions, Tainan City added 50 other indicators for themselves. "Many of those standards don't really reflect Tainan," said Dr. Hu, "Thus through nine-month discussion, we added some conditions that were more appropriate for our city such as public safety, preparedness against natural disasters, and the crime rate."

These norms roughly fall into three categories- environment, social security and health promotion.

Clean environment

A clean environment is very fundamental to a city. Since 2003, Tainan city has been dealing with the problem of vacant spaces and buildings.

"For the vacant spaces or houses, we decided to adopt those spaces and turn them into public spaces instead of levying a fine on the construction agents as we used to do," said Dr. Hu.

The Tainan City Government rebuilt those unused places into parks, parking lots, stadiums and plazas to create a win-win situation. For landowners, their properties became more valuable and did not need to clean them out anymore. For citizens, those vacant spaces became venues for health exercises.

Community beautifying

Planting trees is the easiest way to beautify a city. In the past three years, Tainan has changed a lot by building 37 parks and its green space has increased from 174 hectares to 341 hectares, an increase of more than 100%. The local communities are in charge of managing these parks. In addition, the government works with enterprises to adopt roadside trees, greatly improving their management system.
Street corners are remarkable spots for pedestrians to rest and exercise, so Tainan conducted a "Green Corner Program" and rebuilt 49 corners. Other policies such as saplings, beautification of public spaces, wall paintings and teaching horticulture in community colleges are underway in hopes of refurbishing the Palace City.

Street scenery building

In every city, a campus serves as a great place for education and relaxation. By tightening ties with these educational venues, citizens can have a healthy life within a learning environment. The Street Scenery Building Plan looks to tear down campus walls, beautifying the campus, and integrating schools with communities.

Human- based transportation system development

To provide unobstructed space for pedestrians, the Tainan City Government cleaned the pedestrian sidewalks and encouraged its citizens to ride bikes hoping that one day, the bicycle would be the city's major transportation.

Riding a bike is also a way to cultivate a dynamic living style that builds up a healthy body and reduces air pollution, so the Tainan City Government is planning to open up more bike paths.

Household waste reduction

The first step in reducing the waste of global resources is to decrease the amount of trash. In 2004, the rate of trash recycling in Tainan City reached 25%, 5% higher than the standard expected for 2007. In the first half of 2005, the rate of trash recycling rose to 37.89%. Tainan City was awarded by the Executive Yuan as the best local administration in 2004 in dealing with kitchen waste. To make use of discarded furniture, Tainan City Government established a Furniture Factory to repair used furniture, occasionally held auctions. The income generated will belong to the city government.

Ecological industries

If a man walks into the Tainan Industry Park, he can find the park is located in the middle of Wild Animal Preservation Area, an unique situation in the world. These enterprises are asked to meet the standards of environmental protection.

"It can set a model for the construction of Industry Park in the future," said Dr. Hu, "it will define the combination of technology, culture and sustainable development."

Disadvantaged care plan

Happiness is a status of mental satisfaction, and Palace City wants to extend happiness to the disadvantaged minority by the participation of communities.

Tainan particularly takes care of the disadvantaged people by appropriating a total of NT$ 3,00 million to the low- income elderly for three years and regularly sends volunteers to visit them.

For the children between ages 12 to 18 from disadvantaged family, Tainan City Government subsidizes their lunch fee, tuition and after- school assistance to help them find their future goals. Currently, more than 500 teenagers benefit from the program.

Tainan City also regularly arranges classes and seminars for single mothers and divorced women by teaching them how to start business or find jobs.