Land Creation in the Pearl River Delta, Macau's Case

Macau has a long tradition of reclaiming land to the Pearl River. In approximately 100 years, the territory more than doubled its landmass from 11.6 square kilometer in 1912 to its current area of about 29 square kilometer. The latest reclamation phase plans to add another 3.5 square kilometer to the territory in five designated areas along the Peninsula’s northeastern shore and Taipa’s coastline. These projects continue the most emblematic land reclamation projects built during the last decades of the Portuguese administration. Landfill-based expansion has provided the substrate needed to urbanize the territory and enable its continuous growth. This paper examines the context and potential impacts of the most recent land reclamation projects, the first under PRC’s jurisdiction. The neoliberal expansionist policies of the last decade have turned Macau in the gambling and entertainment hub of Asia. I argue that nature’s uncontrollable forces and the idiosyncrasies of anticipatory planning may change the path (or at least the borders) of the territory, if climate change and sea level rise phenomena are not properly accommodated in the physical designs and long-range regional governance strategies for the Pearl River Delta estuary. The paper utilizes a climate change adaptation and mitigation framework to analyze future territorial impacts on the hydrographic-terrestrial interface. This paper continues a line of research, which started in the late 1990s and culminated with the publication of two research papers: Balsas, C. (1999) Macau: A Story of Land Reclamation. Portuguese Studies Review, 7(2): 80-92 and Balsas, C. (2000) Developing a Transport Infrastructure in a Context of Political Change, the Example of Macau. Third World Planning Review, 22(3): 261-288. The paper attempts to place the most recent land reclamation efforts in the context of other waterfront expansion and regeneration projects in southeastern Asian cities.