Abstract
People are inherently future-makers, capable of creating tomorrow or that which lies decades away for themselves or others. From the processes of one’s “imagination, anticipation, and aspiration,” plans are conceived and justified, among which important notes of culture are revealed (Appadurai 2013: 286). From these starting points this research offers an anthropological analysis of the Taipei municipality as it works to become an increasingly internationalized city and two particular municipal strategies for actualizing this goal: implementing the YouBike bicycle-sharing system and hosting a mega-event, the Universiade. Both strategies incur great change onto Taipei City itself, so this research ethnographically analyzes Taipei inhabitant’s experiences of the changes, the embodiment of which takes many forms. Acts of urban and sustainable development are the product of a lengthy planning process. This exploration into a Taiwanese case of internationalizing strategies offers an ethnographic example of a contemporary Asian city as it develops a sustainable transportation system in attempt to improve Taipei’s infrastructure and ready itself to host an international event. Documenting patterns of future-making, of the actor and the acted upon, yields deepening layers of understanding for Taiwanese society and contemporary development. Further, these mechanisms of internationalizing will be shown to function as homogenizing methods of change, in Taipei and cities around the world.