Scooter moment: Ximending & TiT

Corner of "Movie Street" in Ximending

Okay, so I live in Ximending, and find myself at this intersection just about every day, but I still like the bright lights and variety of people, as long as those people aren’t getting in my way. The darkness you see on the left is the looming structure of  TiT (yeah, try Googling that!), which has been under construction for a couple of years now, and will consist of expensive apartments that run about 60-110 ping, last I heard. TiT, which is short for “Town in Town,” is being built by Aman Corporation, which seemingly should have at least one English-speaker on staff who might have advised against making the TiT acronym so prominent on all of the advertising. At one point two summers ago, they even had large metal lettering on the sidewalk in front of the site, proclaiming “AMAN TiT” to all who passed by. Yup, “a man tit” has come to my crowded little space in Taipei.

I have to wonder what this tower is going to do to the neighborhood when it finally opens, and if the developers have succeeded in filling it yet. Check out this advertisement, which shows the tower design for about 2 seconds in the midst of making Ximending look quiet and romantic:

If they succeed with this development, it will signal a huge victory in changing people’s opinions of the neighborhood. Pretty much every single Taiwanese friend I have thinks I’m crazy for wanting to live in Ximending, with the exception of a handful of bohemians who live and work nearby. The thing is, the people who actually like Ximending enough to perhaps want to live here (teenagers, artists, tourists) are not the people who will be able to afford to live in TiT. I would imagine that the people who do have enough money to live there are not the sort of people who want to deal with the crowds, traffic, and general mayhem of Ximending on a typical weekend. So if people are actually buying up these apartments, does that mean a new kind of 西門町人 is on its way? There are a few other large buildings going up in the neighborhood, so perhaps that’s exactly what developers are hoping for.

Incidentally, though it’s not visible in the photo, the tower has had a crane perched atop it for months now, which terrifies me every time I pass by. After last year’s crane accident near Taipei 101 in which a crane fell from a building and crushed a bus carrying Chinese tourists, I’m paranoid about cranes in general, and don’t like the fact that I have to pass this one regularly.

Anyway, if you’re in the neighborhood, be sure to check out this monster of a construction project. Perhaps you can get your photo with a TiT sign!

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