People have lived along the Tamsui River in what is now New Taipei City (NTPC) for 5,000 years, yet the city is less than 20 years old. It was created in 2010 from 29 administrative districts surrounding Taipei to form a city of more than 4 million residents ringed by majestic mountains and interlaced with two main rivers and six streams.
The region that became NTPC has long been shaped by its relationship with the nation’s capital. The districts included residential areas, and its transport network was oriented to move people and goods into and out of Taipei. It was also home to traditional and often highly polluting industries. Many of them, like ceramics and glass-making, had faced severe competitive pressure from lower-cost countries for decades. While striving to transform individual districts into a unified metropolis, NTPC also faced the need to develop a knowledge-based, technology-centric economy to power its future.
The Future is Digital
Massive investment went into high-speed roads and rails to unite the doughnut-shaped city, but the real focus has been on connectivity. Partnering with the private sector, NTPC has boosted network deployment and promoted cloud-based services for government and business. Carriers now provide broadband with a minimum 100 Mbps to 95% of premises with an adoption rate of 93%.
This core network is supplemented by 4G and 5G mobile and a free Wi-Fi network with more than 2,100 hotspots across the city. Another 20, part of the national I-Tribe program, serve two of the city’s districts that are home to indigenous communities. Through mid-2025, the combined wireless networks have recorded more than 100 million user sessions.
The latest development involves the roll-out of 5G modular smart poles that host street lighting, IoT sensors, cameras, weather sensors and 4G/5G base stations. The technology is expected to reduce long-term infrastructure costs while delivering new levels of service to users.
Knowledge Drives Growth
In just five decades, Taiwan has grown from a producer of low-cost ceramics and electronics into a technology leader whose companies produce most of the world’s semiconductors, mobile phones and computer motherboards. This rate of industrial change has only been possible because the nation and its cities have focused relentlessly on upskilling workers and training new ones.
In 2000, NTPC founded the Labor University, which operates from four centers located near transit or industrial parks. It offers competency courses to maintain proficiency and develop new skills, from foreign languages and accounting to plumbing and electrical repair. Its education courses teach labor law and insurance, dispute mediation, workplace communication and other life and legal issues. By creating a shared understanding among workers and managers, it has been vital in making the workplace harmonious and maintaining high productivity.
The city also operates cooperative education programs for junior high school graduates from low-income families, graduates from technical colleges and unemployed youth and adults. These partnerships among government, educators and industry cover dozens of fields and have helped hundreds of thousands of people find employment and prepare for career advancement.
NTPC brings the same intensity to the delivery of services to citizens. A system called Hot Spots Analysis draws on posts to the city’s Web portals, the logs of the emergency response center and traffic on social networks to identify issues raised frequently by citizens that are not being properly addressed. Monthly meetings of the heads of all city departments review known and new Hot Spots and determine why problems are not being solved. In one example, citizens repeatedly flagged a lack of enough capacity on express commuter buses to handle rush hour passenger loads. Investigating the issue, the city found that its own regulations required every passenger to have a seat – a safety regulation it was unwilling to abandon. Instead, NTPC negotiated with the bus companies to offer a different service: shuttle buses operating on routes that connected outlying areas to train stations. This encouraged more passengers to take the train, which in turn cut rush-hour wait times on the express bus routes in half.
The city also noted a high level of complaints from its indigenous citizens about receiving education subsidies for their children on time. It did not take long to identify the responsible agency. The Commission ordered the agency to standardize its processes, eliminate unnecessary paperwork and establish deadlines for turnaround. Processing time quickly dropped from an average of 35 days to only 15.
New and Renewed Economy
New Taipiei City is home to five major industrial parks and numerous small and midsize parks with a total of 20,000 factories. Its major industries include information and communications technology, advanced manufacturing, biotech, logistics and finance. While supporting these existing industries, the city has built a strong foundation for startups that can drive future growth.
The Crowdfunding Counseling project is a unique program that provides entrepreneurs with business plan analysis, forecasts of potential outcomes and recommendations for improvement. It then develops a professionally designed crowdfunding campaign to solicit input and funding commitments for the company, as well as connecting it with firms likely to provide a product or service testbed. In its first six years, the city helped nearly 80 startups each crowdsource an average of US$120,000. The sums may not be large, but the demonstration of support and crowd feedback helps startups identify their core value and road-test their messaging early in their development, when it can make the biggest difference.
For more advanced startups, universities offer more than 40 incubators and NTPC operates 10 accelerators. All told, NTPC invests US $1.2 million annually in hardware facilities, consultants, operations and funding support for startups. The programs leverage the dense network of established companies and educational institutions, with established companies seeking access to innovation and startups seeking the reach and funding that corporates can provide.
Engaging People in the Future
A city of more than 4 million people can struggle to connect with its citizens in positive ways, make them feel their needs are known and give them a voice in the future. NTPC developed an online engagement platform called New Taipei Vote. It enables the government and its departments to gather frequent comments and suggestions from a much broader range of citizens than traditional surveys or expert committees could manage. The platform supports surveys, polls, contests and participatory voting on budget decisions. Typically, government posts a topic or proposal tied to funding and asks citizens to weigh in with suggestions. The city then evaluates them and puts them out for vote on the platform. In a recent case, the government invited social welfare proposals from the public in one of its districts. After 16 proposals were received, they went through three stages of review of their feasibility by relevant departments, which accepted or amended them to meet legal and regulatory requirements. The system then offered the public an opportunity to vote on the proposals, of which 8 were selected for completion and funded by the city from its budget.
The city also makes digital inclusion a priority through free digital training courses under the EZ Learn brand. NTPC created the program in 2019 to offer training classes and Digital Opportunity Centers where visitors can try the latest technologies. Since its founding, the government has created nearly 13,000 course sessions reaching 260,000 people, ranging from basic digital mastery to popular topics such as AI Agents, podcasting and 3D printing. The program hosts parent-child events to which parents bring young children, engage in a gamified activity and leave with a gift such as an Arduino computer board. A Mobile Computer Teaching Bus brings the classroom to thousands of people, and a digital learning platform, introduced during the pandemic, receives an average of 2 million visits per year.
NTPC stands out for the careful alignment of its policies and programs, and how it interconnects projects to multiply their impact. It is particularly striking in such a large city with many departments and a vast workforce. It is also a competitive advantage – one that multiplies the economic impact of the city’s manufacturers, universities, business and technology parks, and will continue to give it a leading position among the world’s Intelligent Communities.
In the News
Read the latest updates about New Taipei City.
Population: 4,011,586
Website: www.ntpc.gov.tw
Intelligent Community of the Year 2022
Top7 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2022
Smart21 2012 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2022