Justin Yu

Justin Yu is a founder and investor in several startups and has also been invited to serve as a member of the Executive Yuan’s Youth Advisory Committee. In 2010, Yu co-founded Plan b, a planning consultancy that promotes the notion of sustainable development as a tool. Over the years, Plan b has provided distinctive solutions for a diverse clientele including domestic and international businesses, NPOs, and government agencies. In 2015, the Produce Department was added to the firm to engage in in-house projects for spaces (by Plan b). The goal is to reimagine spaces to promote the use of sustainable development as a tool, and to showcase how to effectively integrate sustainable development with other tools, such as design thinking and big data. The Produce Department specialises in revitalising idle urban spaces and has reinvented a number of spaces that have been recognised through various design and social innovation awards. Projects include the Center for Innovation Taipei (CIT), an innovative office space transformed from the former Zhongshan Soccer Stadium, and ParkUp, a series of urban open space placemaking projects.

Redefine Open Space: Urban Issue is Fake Issue
Almost 80% of the population currently lives in the city. Therefore, any city in the modern society must inevitably evoke a series of issues, after rapid development over decades. Creativity, after all, apparently becomes a practical strategy to solve urban issues in the modern era.

Creativity needs to be spread in space, to sprout within crowds, and ultimately to be fermented at the corner of the city, creating impacts. Among all, open space plays a vital role, which serves as a buffering zone between home and work, and it is an experimental base for various creative activities in cities.

However, while cities in Asian countries are developing, there is a serious problem of wasting land resources in the cities. Thus, how to redefine the open space, with utilising sustainable development and design thinking as its mindset, has become a primary solution to the urban issues.