Minsheng Community

Developed through the 1960s and 1970s in Songshan as the Minsheng East Road New Community (民生東路新社區), this was Taiwan’s first American-style model neighbourhood, laid out on a large tract in the city’s northeast under mayor Kao Yu-shu (高玉樹) from 1964 and financed in part by USAID loans. Its plan followed Clarence Perry’s neighbourhood unit theory: seven units, each built around a school within a 400-meter walk and provided with its own small parks, governed by strict building controls that mandated wide spacing, buried power lines, and Taiwan’s first floor-area-ratio limits. Planned for some 70,000 residents and now home to more than 80,000 across roughly three square kilometers, it remains visibly distinct from the surrounding city for its greenery and generous street space.