Executive Yuan's proposal to exempt major construction from the Spatial Planning Act draws criticism as a serious step backward

The Executive Yuan's passage of the Spatial Planning Act amendment on the 20th has sparked controversy. Article 15 was amended to add that "national major construction plans approved by the Executive Yuan" may change land use without being subject to spatial plans at all levels, drawing strong criticism from the outside. This move is tantamount to hollowing out spatial planning and throwing the process into reverse, raising fears that excessive development and land expropriation conflicts will reappear.

Facing public opposition to the amendment, the Ministry of the Interior clarified that the amendment is intended to respond quickly to shifts in the international situation, allowing spatial plans at all levels to be adjusted accordingly so they have the capacity to adapt, and that if the public has concerns they can still raise them through the mechanism. Former Deputy Administrator of the Environmental Protection Administration and environmental lawyer Jan Shun-gui sharply criticized it, saying, "This is a back door that causes spatial planning to rot. We finally managed to close it, and now it has been reopened. It is still the mindset of development above all."

Environmental groups: The Executive Yuan is acting like a bully and pulling privilege, destroying public confidence in the spatial planning system

In the past, many government-led development projects used the name of major construction to expropriate private land, leading to endless protests and the decline of the nation's land, with society paying a huge cost. Later, civil society advocated legislation for the Spatial Planning Act, hoping that by establishing the highest-level spatial plan, the rationality of land zoning and procedural justice could be strengthened, and great expectations were placed on spatial planning.

Wu Chi-jung, a specialist at the Earth Foundation who has long promoted public participation in spatial planning review, believes the Executive Yuan's approach this time is "quite bullying." The existing spatial planning process opens a platform for each agency to propose land use needs and discuss them, and any development need can enter discussion through this procedure. Yet the Executive Yuan chose to break the rules of the game and destroy the guiding principle of spatial planning as a higher-level plan. Years of civil society effort and the rational order of land use will be destroyed in an instant.

Wu said: "Any development project can be included for discussion under the existing review procedures. I do not understand why the Executive Yuan now wants to break the rules that spatial planning worked so hard to establish. In the future, any controversial case, as long as it is labeled a national major construction plan, can be free of constraints. Any controversial development project only needs to go through this institutional loophole, which is effectively a privileged channel. The executive branch can arbitrarily designate major construction as exempt from spatial planning constraints, and the civil service system will be at a loss and unable to act as a gatekeeper."

Huang Tzu-yun of the Environmental Jurists Association lamented that the Executive Yuan's amendment now authorizes itself to "ignore" the functional zoning content of county and city spatial plans. This approach fundamentally corrupts the system: "When all local groups and the public participate in review of county and city-level spatial plans, after all that work it seems to become wasted effort. Spatial planning still seems unable to play the role of guiding national spatial planning. Whether now or in the future, when Taiwanese businesses return and want to add industrial zones, as long as the Executive Yuan approves it, they are simply not bound by county and city spatial plans."

Jan Shun-gui: "This is a back door that causes spatial planning to rot"

Environmental lawyer Jan Shun-gui said that one part of this amendment is to postpone the announcement schedule for county and city spatial plans. If local government operations cannot keep up, he believes an appropriate extension is not unreasonable. However, the amendment to Article 15 is a serious warning sign of regression. Jan Shun-gui sharply criticized:
"What is major construction as defined by the Executive Yuan? This kind of legislation is too much rule by man! In the past, the economic mindset was development above all, yet there is simply no standard for the state to approve major construction. From the Chen Shui-bian government's 'big investment, big warmth' to the KMT's eight-year 800 billion, a whole bunch of names were just boasting."

The government keeps using the trend of Taiwanese businesses returning as a pretext to play up economic development and advocate releasing development resources such as land, water, and energy. Jan Shun-gui believes Taiwanese businesses are returning because of rising labor costs in China, rising environmental regulations, and the US-China trade war. The government should not make unlimited demands, and even less should it serve as reasonable endorsement for large-scale development of the nation's land. Misjudgment by economic agencies will lead to the disastrous result of the nation's land being lost.

Jan Shun-gui said that in the past the Ma government arbitrarily developed land under the name of "major public construction," leading to disordered land management, and excessive development caused widespread outrage. Therefore, in 2015 civil society lobbied lawmakers from both the KMT and DPP in the Legislative Yuan to amend the law and abolish the bad old practice that "major construction is not subject to regulation." Unfortunately, after the DPP administration won another term, the Executive Yuan actually amended the bad law back in.

"This is a back door that causes spatial planning to rot. We finally managed to close it, and now it has been reopened. It is still the mindset of development above all," Jan Shun-gui sighed deeply.

Hsu Shih-jung: Any plan is