Abstract

In the mid-nineteenth century, Hong Kong was ceded to the British and quickly became the dominant port in the region. This caused a sharp decline in the fortunes of Macau. In response, the Portuguese administration unilaterally declared sovereignty over the peninsula and began to annex nearby islands, while attempting to increase tax revenue by legalizing gambling and prostitution, diversifying the economy into opium processing and the ‘coolie’ slave trade, and initiating a series of harbour improvement and land reclamation projects. With the end of Portuguese control in 1999, the new Macau Special Administrative Region government ended the local gambling monopoly and allowed foreign casino corporations to move in. Land reclamation projects that had been intended primarily for residential developments were overwhelmed by new ‘integrated resort’ casino-hotels, perpetuating an economic and urban model that began as colonial expediency and is today the primary source of Macau's economic strength and global identity. Given the cumulative impact of the artificial creation of the land, the artificial utopias of the casino complexes, and the artificial political status of the Special Administrative Region, one could argue that the authenticity of Macau lies precisely in its artificiality. This chapter examines the urban and architectural implications.