Professionals should come together for louder voice for city development – Scholar

Different professional sectors of Macau should pull together to assume a leading role to prove that the city is well prepared for its integration with the Hengqin Island, President of the International Council of Architects of the Portuguese Language Rui Leão has urged.

One the sidelines of a talk held this morning by the France Macau Chamber of Commerce on the city’s urban planning blueprint unveiled in February this year, guest speaker Leão lamented that the city lacks enough open platforms and channels for productive dialogue among professionals of different industries, which the senior architect thinks is crucial to the future development of Macau.

With neighbouring Hengqin on course for a further integration with the city in the near future, Leão called on all stakeholders in Macau, either in the private sector or in the civil service, to step forward to embrace collective discussion in a proactive manner.

“We should all know what’s going on in Zhuhai and Hengqin because that should be part of our discussion, and our government should be more engaged in creating platforms for collective dialogue,” said Leão.

“I think the government should show Hengqin that it can lead. The reason why Hengqin is useful is that it is for the Macau government to show that they can lead to create a new kind of city that is an interface between mainland and Macau,” the scholar said.