The Evolved Urban Fabric Around Farm Ponds Next to Train Stations

Naai-Jung Shih and Yi-Ting Qiu
Department of Architecture, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology

Abstract

The farm ponds represent a sustainable utilization of water resources and systems that had been resilient to the topological change in plate elevation over time. This research aims to study the resilience of farm ponds based on the quantitative estimation of the evolving urban fabric in the neighborhoods of train stations in Taoyuan, Taiwan. The historical development of Taoyuan was inspected by the evolved urban fabric from the percentage of disappearance of pond area in two stages: between 1989 and 1921, 1921 and 2021, under the impact of urbanization. Inspection was made to the area near eight old railroad stations. The percentage was found between 0 and 40 in the period of 1989-1921, and between 56 and 100 in the period of 1921-2021. A significant decrease of the farm ponds occurred due to the transfer of original land use for other purposes. Many of the ponds are now obsolete and draw people’s attention. We concluded that the land use around train stations changed dramatically. The planning of railroad system had accelerated the urbanization, with farm ponds being changed to different types of land use. The ponds near train stations were usually filled for construction. Moreover, the ponds located far away from the stations were also filled as agricultural land.


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