The shortlist

The coolest neighborhoods in Taipei.

This site exists to give one answer per city, and for Taipei the answer is Da'an around Yongkang Street. But three other neighborhoods made the argument hard. Here is the shortlist, the pick at the top, and the honest case for each of the ones that lost.

01

Da'an / Yongkang Street The pick

Da'an won on depth. Chifeng has better bones, Dadaocheng has better history, Minsheng has better sidewalks. None of them can match what happens when you spend a full day inside a few blocks of Da'an. Coffee at Yaboo, sushi at Yóu, sake at PS Sake Bar after dark, embroidery at Littdlework, souvenirs that aren't embarrassing at Lai Hao. The transformation here finished years ago, and that turns out to be the point. Nothing is performing its own reinvention. The galleries, the ceramics, the tea, they just operate. Every other neighborhood on this list is becoming something. Da'an already became it, and stayed good.

Read the full case for Da'an / Yongkang Street →
02

Chifeng Street

The one that will win this ranking in five years if it survives its own popularity. Old iron and auto-parts shops still trade next to PAR Store's basement of records and vintage, Kimotsi Bookstore's serpentine-clad shelves, and at least three other bookstores within a few lanes. That density of print culture on one short street is rare anywhere. The warning signs are real too: % Arabica has landed, visitors grumble that the vintage racks repeat themselves, and the retro look is now a photo backdrop first. Mid-wave gentrification is the most exciting phase and the least stable one. Go now.

03

Dadaocheng

Taipei's oldest commercial street, and the only neighborhood here with two distinct lives. By day, Dihua Street runs on herbal medicine, tea merchants, and the Yongle Fabric Market, businesses that have held their corners for a century. By night, the crowd shifts to the container bars at Dadaocheng Wharf on the Tamsui River. Craft beer and coffee have moved into the shophouses, but the legacy trades still hold, partly by policy design. It lost the top spot because the new layer is still thin. It came second because the old layer is irreplaceable.

04

Minsheng Community

Taipei's first American-style planned neighborhood, built in the 1960s with a real grid, low rooflines dictated by Songshan Airport, and twenty parks. Fujin Street carries the scene: Fujin Tree 353, Wolf Tea, Mercer Brunch, a BEAMS outpost. Japanese visitors compare it to Daikanyama, and the comparison holds. It missed the top spot for the same reason it's pleasant: the transformation settled long ago and stopped moving. Nothing is at stake here. Come for a slow morning and a plane skimming the rooftops, not for a scene in motion.

No juries, no sponsors. How we pick explains the rules; Da'an / Yongkang Street is where they landed.

Last updated