Wind–Human Resonance in a Polluted City: The Case of Dalinpu in Kaohsiung, Taiwan

Air pollution creates significant challenges, particularly in countries undergoing rapid industrialization and urbanization. Wind, a strong agency in moving polluting to and away, however, does not attract sufficient attention from the social science literature on urban health and air pollution. This article fills this gap by proposing the concept of wind–human resonance, referring to both the capacity and intensity of the wind as two kinds of human–wind relationships in the weather-world. On the one hand, certain cleaning and blocking practices are carried out by residents, corresponding to the wind’s carrying capacity of air pollutants; fishing activities are altered according to the wind capacity in the atmo-oceanic dynamic. On the other hand, the intensity of the wind envelops an industrialized coastal village where community members engage with the oceanic wind that shapes the community identity (and affect). This framework of an entangled human–wind relationship is empirically examined through the case of the coastal Dalinpu area of Kaohsiung in southwestern Taiwan, a community that has successfully organized a campaign in the name of “southwest wind preservation” to terminate an industrial zone construction project. By revealing how wind is physically and affectively entangled into urban politics, this article aims to foreground the air flow study in volume geography in particular and the human–environment relationship in general.