This paper appears in the
Proceedings of the East West Conference 1997, University of Hawaii
Abstract
Reclamation is increasingly used in Asia to provide additional land in cities, often with the stated intentions of providing land for public spaces. This paper evaluates the success of reclamation strategies by looking at the example of Macau where reclamation has doubled the size of the city in the past century.
Reclamation is commonly carried out in Asia as a means to expand city space, in part to provide public urban spaces which cannot be created within the existing fabric of dense cities and to provide other conveniences of a 'modern' city. As a method for achieving this, reclamation is not new; such actions have been taken in the past in such diverse places as London (Greenwich / Plumstead), Boston, and Hong Kong among many others. There is a significant volume of reclamation slated to start or currently being undertaken in Asia. Malaysia alone has slated 1,214 hectares of coastal reclamation. It is timely, therefore, to look critically at a history of reclamation as a tool in improving urban space.
We have chosen Macau as the subject for this case study as it offers three distinctions. The Portuguese heritage brings with it a strong Mediterranean tradition of planning with public spaces. This tradition is superimposed onto a Chinese context which does not have a similar tradition of public spaces (Wang 1997), allowing us to observe the evolution of an introduced concept. The second distinction is that Macau has been occupied by the Portuguese for over 400 years, a significant period over which to observe expansion of the city. The third is that the latest reclamation project was undertaken specifically "to create new urban expansion areas in the territory and attempt to reorganise the urban fabric." (Prescott 1993), allowing us to use it as a benchmark against which the earlier reclamations were made.
In common with cities which share its Mediterranean heritage, Macau was well provided with public spaces which constituted important defining nodes for the action and activities of its citizens. Since it was founded in 1557, however, Macau has doubled the area of the city through reclamation. Over this period, public spaces have been gained and lost. A significant reclamation project was initiated in 1982 in an attempt to re-establish major public spaces as the defining elements of the city and the results are salutary for those considering the creation of land as an effective strategy.
Macau today is a city of 500,000 people living on 22 sq. km. consisting of three main areas: the peninsula of Macau and the islands of Taipa and Coloane. Most of the population lives on the peninsula itself. The enclave is visited by over 7 million visitors each year. Primary industries are tourism (driven in large part by the casinos), light manufacturing and some trans-shipment of goods from China, continuing a heritage of trade which led to its establishment as a Portuguese harbour in 1557.
Macau saw little change or development until the Portuguese occupied the peninsula in the mid sixteenth century. When they arrived, it was a peninsula of approximately 3 sq. km. connected to the China mainland by a very narrow neck of sand which could be flooded at high tides. There were a few temples (already a few centuries old) and farm houses already constructed but the population was sparse. Within ten years, the population had grown to "over 5000, not including Chinese or slaves" (Pires 1987). By 1583, a Municipal Senate was formed and in 1586 Macau was designated a City. Places of worship began to be erected almost immediately upon settlement, with significant churches appearing from 1590 onwards. A protective wall was built in 1606 around the Jesuit settlement with a second fortress in 1629 and several more by 1638 (Duncan 1987).
The enclave had evolved rapidly, therefore, from a poorly defined settlement on Chinese agricultural patterns to one based on an Occidental urban architecture of churches, fortifications and civic buildings. The former probably consisting isolated buildings, most likely each walled, using courtyards to form internal spaces for living and congregating and no formal external spaces for public gatherings. The latter structures were erected by Portuguese engineers, naval officers and church officials according to the general principles of building of their culture and time. The city was immediately divided into two - a fortified western city and housing for the Chinese outside the walls.
In the course of these first three centuries of occupation, we see a growing formalisation of the city. The earliest map we can find of the city is one published in 1796 by Sir George Staunton in his report on the Macartney embassy to China (Hong Kong Museum of Art 1996). Redrawn for clarity here as Figure 1, the original is annotated to identify six forts, three parishes, two colleges, four convents, four chapels and sixteen locations of note, including two Chinese temples. There are obvious mistakes in the overall shoreline when compared to more modern surveys but the form of the city can be seen. The inner and primary harbour is on the north west shore which is more protected. The outer harbour on the south east, the Praia Grande, is lined with buildings, including the governor's house, the houses of leading traders and significant ecclesiastical institutions. At the southern tip is a hill on which forts and churches stand, with temples at its base. The urban pattern is one that Camillo Cite would be familiar with and perhaps use as an exemplar. Organic growth between the Praia Grande and the harbour have led to narrow winding streets which open into wider intersections. Plazas are formed adjacent to the significant churches. A large market square is found in the middle of the city. The fabric of the city is woven from filaments of narrow lanes and nodes where people gather. Although we have no earlier maps of the city, the same pattern can be seen in the 1598 engraving of Macao (Amacao) by Theodore de Bry (Hong Kong Museum of Art 1996) with the Praia, the harbour, squares and churches.
Looking at the 1898 map (Figure 2, from Hurley 1898), we see the same pattern, nothing has disturbed it in three hundred years. Reclamation can be observed. The harbour front has been increased, a natural act of a trading station investing in improved trans-shipment facilities. Shallow waterfront has been replaced by quays. This also opens up the northern edge of the city to fulfil a function similar to the Praia Grande, the place to stroll and be seen, the place to meet and conduct business and exchanges. Waterfront edges such as the Praia in Macau or Shanghai's Bund are important in coastal trading towns throughout the world.
Although we are examining patterns of urban development, we should note that the houses along the Praia Grande are an ingenious and significant assimilation of two cultures, echoing the underlying dual nature of Macau. The facades are purely European - a reconstituted renaissance style using columns of the grand orders. These facades, however, hide buildings of purely Chinese plan internally, consisting of central courtyards flanked by buildings axially and symmetrically. The central position is occupied by the main hall, the parent's quarters and the elder son's quarters. As you penetrate further back, you reach lesser members of the family. To the sides lie the service spaces. The public face, however, reflects the European order - the organic wall city, not the highly ordered Chinese walled city.
By 1912 (Brito 1962), we see further expansion of the harbour. By this time, Hong Kong had been established and was a serious rival for the coastal trade in southern China. The harbour facilities in Hong Kong were better - a deeper draught, a more sheltered harbour. Major trading houses had started to establish their headquarters in Hong Kong and Macau was in need of better facilities to compete. Macau's first venture into heavy industry can be seen on Ilha Verde (Green Island) which was connected to the shore by a causeway and a cement production plant established in 1889.
Macau's inner harbour is extended around the north western flank and ship yards appear along the coast. The city grows to meet the new edge with street patterns in keeping with the forms of the older city. Streets follow contours or natural edges. Larger spaces appear at intersections of streets of odd angles. We see the first intimations of a more formal city plan being made at the northern, agricultural edge of the city in the centre of the peninsula in an area now known as San Antonio. Here the planner has organised city blocks in a rectilinear street pattern with a large square where streets meet at 45o, reminiscent of Cerdà's plan for Barcelona of 1859.
The map of 1927 shows us the first dramatic intentions to grow. The initial expansion shown in 1912 is mostly completed, the central square implemented, diagonal streets breaking up the overlaid grid. City blocks and urban forms are created which show more order than the old city but still retain the same scale. The new sections of town show another heritage, however. Large sections of reclamation are laid out with indications of intended street patterns, all laid out on strictly rectilinear forms. The expansion into the small remaining areas of agricultural land mediate the change, shifting from tightly woven streets to straight avenues. Accidental gathering places no longer happen as streets meet at odd angles. A large park is shown in the centre to provide a formal open space of a city scale. This is the section of town into which the growing middle class move, traders without established trading houses. Many too are the members of the growing Eurasian community who now control much of the local economy.
The scale of the 1927 expansion is significantly different from previous growth, just as the scale of the harbour facilities shown are larger. A new sense of the world is manifested - the impact of an ordered manufactured world can be found in this by now quiet trading station. Massive reclamation is required to implement this plan. In an effort to bring back some of the sea-going shipping trade, the main harbour is to be moved from the inner harbour to the outer. Harbour walls are to be built to the south east in an (ultimately futile) attempt by the Portuguese naval engineers to deal with the silt from the Pearl River which fouls the harbour. Light industry is located in the areas to the northern end such as Areia Preta by the gate to China. Space is created which later finds use as the greyhound race track.
By 1979, we find the planned expansion changed in nature from that intended in 1927. At the south eastern harbour front, the designer (Jon Prescott) has implemented the plan in a less heavy handed fashion. Wide roads bound an area of tight streets with a few small urban spaces, again reminiscent of the scale of the old city, although with a more rigid geometry. The bounding roads are wide and traffic fast (it is on these streets that the Macau Grand Prix is held annually), effectively making this an island within the city, cut off from the rest of the city and the sea front.
At the northern end of the peninsula we find a large area of reclamation, large city blocks, wide streets and avenues with centre reserves but no plazas. The dog race track has been moved to Taipa, an island immediately to the south to which a bridge has been built, freeing up the land for lower income housing (Brito 1962). Light industry is also located in this new expansion but the relaxation of border controls to China have made a dramatic impact with much of the industry moving north of the border. This frees up land for more housing for lower income groups. The land to the eastern end has been bounded but used as a fresh water reservoir rather than for building as planned in 1927. This provides some open space located in a somewhat inaccessible corner.
In 1982 the proposal was made to expand Macau again. Traffic congestion, a polluted and silted waterfront (among other features) were giving the city a bad reputation. Seeing the successes of cities in the region, the Macau government and leading business figures decided that a modern city could be created by reclaiming yet more land and building modern structures (Prescott 1993). A series of public competitions were announced for urban development studies to guide the expansion of land area.
For the first stage, the Macau Administration selected a team led by a Hong Kong-based planning practice, P&T Group, who teamed with Siza Vieira and Fernando Távora of Portugal, to design the reclamation of the Porto Exterior, the outer harbour. This team submitted plans in 1984 consisting of a rectilinear urban grid of 144m by 72m which can be seen in the south east portion of Figure 6. The plan is "characterised by a clarity of principles and geometric rigor but sufficiently flexible to ensure the survival of those few disciplining elements of the plan when confronted with eventual changes in programming of occupation for the area." (Prescott 1993). The plan consists of large blocks, four wide to the west and two wide to the east, six block deep on the north south axis. A central reserve parts the east and west sections and is continued on to the shore to provide a visual connection. A park lies to the east, disconnected and inaccessible from the rest of Macau except through the new development. All this is placed on a podium created by separating the reclamation from the existing edge with a canal for surface water drainage. Thus, the result is distinct and different urban fabric from that which has preceded it.
The second stage was the reclamation of the outer harbour beside the Praia Grande. This was conceived initially as simply a reclamation of the bay resulting in a straightened water front and resulting semi-circular flat plate of land on which to develop. After a competition, the winning scheme (by Manuel Vicente) was revealed to propose not to reclaim straight across the bay but to create instead two large pools of water and an island created by a causeway in an arc which inverts the broad Praia Grande of the past and a second causeway linking around the Barra at the southern tip. Twelve blocks are positioned on the north east edge of the ponds to create a clear urban edge to the water. The Praia itself is to be widened by reclaiming some space along the water's edge, restoring the grandeur of the avenue which has been eroded by traffic, parking and development. In 1991, the "Reorganisation of the Praia Grande" was gazetted with the following aims (Prescott 1993):
Subsequently, the plans have changed; the pools of salt water are now fresh water in order to preserve acceptable water quality and odours. The Barrier walls and causeways are in place but the development on hold as the investments and attractions have failed to materialise.
There are two aspects of interest to us in this review: urban spaces and the use of reclamation to create such spaces. The urban spaces of Macau have been used for a number of purposes, such as to create spaces for commerce; spaces for civil transactions (e.g. Praia Grande); create sense of place and identity; resolve difficult geometry; and belatedly as a qualification to belong to the ranks of cosmopolitan cities. Initial reclamation efforts were focused on providing Macau with facilities for commerce - quays, straighter waterfronts. The Praia Grande offered something different - the place for society to mix, to relax.
Macau's early growth shares principles and outcomes in common with towns under European control. Buildings grow in a form dictated by functions and topology. Streets follow contours or natural phenomenon, unlike the Chinese planned city based on geomantic rules. Initially, reclamation is undertaken to support growth in this organic method. At the conclusion of these four centuries of expansion, the peninsula has doubled in size, from just over 3 sq. km to approximately 7 sq. km.
Starting with the expansions of the beginning of this century planned by Lázaro, the scale of the city blocks and the nature of spaces provided changed. The distances between gathering points increases from a pedestrian scale to something much larger. The pedestrian can no longer stroll from node to node but is channelled down avenues or streets to junctions.
The 1970s Prescott-designed expansion is a mixed success. The area has the feel of barrenness, long blocks leaving the pedestrian exposed to the noise and motion of the traffic. The few urban spaces which have been created are minor, dominated by the traffic flow. That the spaces work, however, can be seen by walking around and observing the business conducted and the social activities present. The feel in these small and isolated pockets is that of the older section of the city. We think this section is partially successful because it is a small area, not too removed fm the city and adjacent to the most popular casino.
The reclamation of 1984 by the P&T Group fails even to provide that. The central reserve is of a scale which reminds you of revolutionary societies which need to control the citizenry. The resultant structures have been compared to the worst of 1960's council housing (Seurre 1996). It is so featureless that the residents of Macau do not want to move in, the development remaining largely vacant today.
The stated aims of the 1991 reclamation indicate that the reason for undertaking this reclamation is to create a sense of city and an urban space which is attractive to the cosmopolitan and more sophisticated technocrats who will help to create prosperity and commerce. Vicente sets out a new agenda for urbanity and demonstrates how to achieve it. As such, this last reclamation is the clearest in its aims and one that addresses most directly the need for urban spaces in which to live.
We have above described a series of reclamations which have all taken place in one small and clearly bounded city. Some we can say are successful, others not quite so good. Successful urban planning is a difficult result to define, it belongs in that range of experiences which "you can't say what it is but you know when you see it". Sometimes you can observe success in financial terms - prosperity comes from good planning, just as the city fathers of Macau have hoped. Other times, it comes in the feeling of urbanity and well-being, a "cultured" result, again as the city fathers of Macau have hoped. Another scale of success can be the popularity of the city - a large influx of inhabitants might indicate that the city is a well planned environment. Of course, all these measures are imprecise and subject to influence from many other factors. When evaluating the success of reclamation strategies, we need to consider these factors and conjecture as to the sources of success.
Looking at the example which Macau gives us, we see three distinct kinds of reclamation activity. In scale of effect, the first is small, such as that seen in the eighteenth century. Typically, this reclamation is intended to tidy up the urban edges along waterfront in order to provide better sites for commerce and essential functions of the city (Inner Harbour) or to clarify and stabilise a waterfront from erosion (Praia Grande). This we can call incremental. The second form of reclamation is a large reclamation where the resultant land is a substantial increment to the land available for habitation. This kind of reclamation can be seen in Macau after 1900; we refer to this as expansive. The third kind can be illustrated by the 1991 design which attempts to redefine the city by adding a substantial and therefore significant component to the city and we refer to as definitive.
A waterfront edge to a city is intrinsically different from a land edge. The land edge is a 'soft' edge, an edge which can be eroded a little at a time, street by street, block by block. Growth is organic, responding to geological, societal and temporal forces which leave imprints of character which give the resulting neighbourhoods a sense of place. Incremental reclamation behaves in much the same way; the growth which results can easily respond to the city behind.
Unlike a land edge, a water edge is not 'soft', it is more a hard barrier. To make any expansion is expensive in effort and resources. If not carried out intentionally and substantially, the edge can be eroded and all structures swept away by the forces of water. The sea wall must be strong and it represents a major portion of the investment in reclamation. Obviously more acreage behind the wall allows better amortisation of costs. Often, therefore, the reclamation is large and the resultant land from expansive reclamation is flat and featureless. The forces which make the reclamation necessary (such as traffic problems) dominate the planning, resulting in an unbalanced urban form, favouring one need over the many and complex needs of society. The result is a disjoint and unconnected sector of the city, no longer connected to the older city in sense or character.
We can of course find similar substantial expansions of cities into adjoining land, such as Barcelona's expansion in the nineteenth century. In this example, we can observe an expansion of such strong character that it sets up a separate counterpoint to the exiting older city, successfully creating a new city whose life enhances the old. In the expansive reclamation of Macau, however, we do not find this successful result occurring, just as the Docklands "reclamation" in London has failed. The schemes implemented in Macau from 1900 to 1984 have broken from the traditional urban fabric but not replaced it with something successful. They are differentiated but insufficiently distinct.
Belatedly, the Macau city planners recognised that quality of urban space is important and the last definitive expansion attempts to introduce urban forms which aim to enhance the urban experience. The reclamation provides not only room for more commerce and habitation, it sets out to create a better living environment based on current desires and principles. In this sense, it joins the established tradition of urban design which redefines the city through grand gestures rather than incremental growth.
From this review, we see that reclamation is a distinct and different planning action which should be covered by different planning principles to those used for expansion into adjoining land. The scale of the reclamation must be considered and appropriate strategies used to govern planning. Policies and planning guidelines should therefore recognise these distinctions to encourage success. If there is any one thing which distinguishes successful from unsuccessful reclamations in Macau, it is in the role of public space. The presence of public spaces makes the difference. The land created by reclamation is rather like easy money: easily found (in that land title is clearly the government's) and easily squandered.
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