Planning sustainability

Busy, busy, busy. Since resuming activity after the summer break, the Macau SAR government’s agenda is again packed with urban issues. Several national and international meetings, the signing of protocols, and platform summits are filled with the usual set of urban controversies that confer a sense of urgency to the schedules of executive and secretaries alike. Where there is a will, there is a plan. But nothing is to be rushed. Official announcements for a series of urban projects – public library, hospital, LRT, housing facilities – sometimes appear to be more of a strategy for mollifying jaded residents than a clear roadmap for action. In fact, tentative completion dates are being unveiled and public consultations are on the list of governmental programmes. But these projects are subject to the development and implementation of Macau’s Master Plan. This once-forsaken subject has recently made a somewhat unassuming re-entry into the public debate, reinvigorated in purpose, though not in principle, under the rubric of Macau as a “global centre of tourism and leisure”.
Two main questions seem to be at the core of public concerns: urban rescaling and tourism upgrading. As Macau expands, demand soars for consequential infrastructure capable of accommodating people and goods, as well as decongesting the city streets and public spaces. Reclaimed land zones will certainly help but, then again, they take time to materialize. It also seems Macau will continue to be inundated with visitors. Perhaps it is time to seriously consider the spectrum of possibilities opened by granting the SAR territorial water rights as a way to keep some of these people offshore. But above all, reconciling mass tourism and ambitious urban development entails planning. Architects and urban planners have been diligently calling attention to this point, while heritage and neighbourhood associations have mentioned the negative impacts due to the lack thereof.
Indeed, planning is what ties promising proposals to liveable realities, thereby providing an urban framework able to accommodate economic fluctuations, demographic pressures, and the inevitability of change. The key word here is sustainability. A century ago, Robert E. Park, one of the founders of urban studies in Chicago – the then-epitome of American urbanism and modernity – argued that cities are all about “growth.” Nowhere is this more relevant than in China today. Let us hope Macau’s government will persevere with vision and collective purpose.