Claimed to be of the most tremendous scale, the Taoyuan Aerotropolis Project exemplifies the characteristics of urban planning in Taiwan, which gives priority to the revenue enhancement of governments and allotment of property with authoritarian approaches and ideology of developmentalism. The districts of Dayuan and Luzhu, now facing the development project of Taoyuan Aerotropolis executed by means of “devastating all for starting from scratch,” are not wastelands with no inhabitants. The land bears the history and culture constructed over hundred years, as well as lives of and communication among more than ten thousand households, containing traditional social features that have disappeared in the contemporary urban life.

The landscape accommodates and responds to the invisible and sophisticated networks of relationships beyond itself.

As the development project goes on, temples being ruined, gods being removed, inhabitants being forced to leave their hometown and bid old neighbors farewell, people’s emotions and bitterness burst out for being deprived of ways of living. The team of Aerotropolis Live Stories in Dayuan intervenes in the site via the openness of art and culture acts, attempting to work as a medium between the site and the development project, and also to provide buffering to deal with the differences between the two parties, picking up and collecting fragments of sensibilities discarded by the development. Being the front line for the expansion of Greater Taipei Metropolitan Area, the whole field of Taoyuan is subject to sudden changes of landscapes. We expect the project Aerotropolis Live Stories in Dayuan can connect with the citizens (for now or the future) facing the urban planning while intervene in the site to perceive and postpone the feelings of unbearableness and absurdity happening at the aerotropolis, bringing them into public view as witnesses to the upheaval and as reminders for our future.