Sacred Place, Community Identity, and Heritage Transformation under Airport Expansion: A Human Ecology Study of Zhuwai Fuhai Temple, Taiwan
This human ecology study of the Zhuwai Fuhai Temple in Taiwan argues that sacred heritage should be understood as a place-based human–environment relationship rather than a transferable object, revealing how airport expansion governance prioritizes technical constraints over community identity and collective memory despite recognizing cultural value.
Original paper licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). This is an AI-generated explanation of the paper below. It is not written or endorsed by the authors. For technical accuracy, refer to the original paper. Read full disclaimer
Imagine the world as a giant, living puzzle where people, buildings, nature, and history are all connected pieces. Sometimes, we need to move a big piece to make room for a new highway or an airport, but what happens when that piece isn't just a building—it's a place where people pray, remember their ancestors, and feel a deep spiritual connection? This is the heart of human ecology, a field of study that looks at how humans interact with their environment, not just as physical objects, but as a web of relationships, memories, and meanings. When we talk about sacred places, we aren't just talking about old bricks and mortar; we are talking about a "home" for a community's soul. And when infrastructure projects like airport expansions come along, they often treat these places like simple obstacles to be moved or removed. But does moving a temple really move the spirit inside it? This question matters to everyone because it asks whether our progress should come at the cost of erasing the stories and identities that make our communities who they are.
This paper dives into a real-life drama in Taiwan involving the Zhuwai Fuhai Temple, a historic site over 160 years old, and a massive plan to expand an airport with a third runway. The author, Yi-Chang Chiang, investigates what happens when a sacred place gets caught in the gears of a giant construction project. Instead of just asking "Should we save it or build the runway?", the study looks at how the decision was made. It turns out, the story isn't a simple battle between "good" preservationists and "bad" developers. Instead, it's a complex game of translation. Imagine the temple's value as a secret language. The government and engineers speak the language of "safety zones," "land acquisition," and "construction schedules." The temple keepers speak the language of "sacred geography," "ritual routes," and "ancestral memory." The study finds that the government successfully "translated" the temple's value into a language they could manage: they decided to take the temple apart, move the pieces to a new spot, and rebuild it. They called this "component preservation."
However, the paper suggests that this translation missed the most important part of the message. While the government thought they were saving the heritage by saving the bricks, the community and some experts argue that the temple is like a living tree; you can't just cut it down and replant the roots in a different pot and expect it to be the same. The "sacredness" isn't just in the wood and stone; it's in the specific spot where the tree has grown for centuries, the paths people walk to get there, and the memories attached to that exact soil. The study shows that the decision to move the temple wasn't caused by technical constraints alone. It happened because the displacement resulted from a combination of those technical limits and a governance process that recognized cultural value without fully incorporating it into the final decision. The author suggests that if the planners had kept the conversation open longer, they might have found a "hybrid" solution—perhaps keeping part of the temple right where it is, or designing the airport to work around it. But by the time the decision was made, the "pathway" to those creative solutions had been paved over by the momentum of the construction schedule.
The paper explicitly argues against the idea that moving a sacred building and keeping its parts is the same as keeping the place itself. It clarifies that technical constraints were indeed a primary driver, but they were not the only reason; the way the government framed the problem—seeing the temple as a "land clearance issue" rather than a "living community hub"—was what ultimately sealed its fate. The study doesn't claim to have solved the problem or stopped the construction (in fact, the temple was scheduled for relocation in 2026), but it does suggest that we need a better way to listen. It proposes that we should stop treating sacred places as movable objects and start treating them as relationships that need to be maintained. If we want to build the future without losing our past, we need to learn how to speak both languages: the language of engineering and the language of the heart, and find a way to let them coexist rather than letting one silence the other.
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