It's just past dusk and the crowds are getting bigger at Huashan 1914 Creative Park, a distillery-turned-arts-hub in the heart of Taiwan's capital.

Couples drift out of an exhibition of Pulitzer Prize-winning photography, while families gather at Alleycat's Pizza. In Café Lumière, named after a 2003 film by Hou Hsiao-hsien, students order cappuccinos before heading over to the adjoining art-house cinema.

The compound's spacious lawn is filled with city dwellers enjoying the warm evening with their four-legged friends. "A lot of the times, there are more dogs than people," Lee Chang-Fang, the director of Huashan 1914, told me with a smile.

In most major Asian cities, this scene wouldn't be taking place. A well-connected developer would have snapped up the 7-hectare parcel of land that makes up Huashan, valued at $1 billion, and erected a mall or condominium block.

Welcome to the new Taipei. Other Asian cities might compete on building the flashiest skyscrapers or glitziest shopping center. But the Taiwanese capital, once a typical '80s Asian Tiger boomtown, is forging a different path.