Beyond the <i>shi-jie</i> neighbourhood unit: constructing an education-belt for the Kaohsiung city of tomorrow

Urban fragmentation is often seen as a failure of planning. This paper repositions it as a condition for civic infrastructure reuse and reactivation, using Kaohsiung, Taiwan, as a critical case. It reframes shi-jie neighbourhoods – originally school-based units – as morphogenetic seeds for multi-layered education infrastructure. Through arcaded corridors, inverted streets, and sunken railways, it proposes an ‘education belt’ linking institutions, mobility, and civic programmes across territorial scales. Drawing from Cedric Price’s flexible urbanism and the logic of the 15-Minute City, the study envisions a translatable model where learning and public life interweave as distributed civic systems.