An increasing number of historic urban landscapes in World Heritage historic areas have faced damage since the 1990s. Due to the importance of the Historic Centre of Macao and tremendous development pressure, the World Heritage Committee noted in 2008 that the development of high-rise buildings around the Historic Centre of Macao threatens the authenticity and integrity of the city’s heritage; the SAR Government was asked to take appropriate measures.

“Macao Historic Urban Landscape Conservation Research” is based on investigating Macao’s historic landscape resources and the challenges in conservation currently being faced; the project will start with and focus on the Historic Centre of Macao, which was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2005. It will review cutting-edge international ideas about historic urban landscape conservation on how to reasonably guide the modernization needs of historic areas while establishing a comprehensive system of conservation measures and ensuring the conservation and permanence of World Cultural Heritage in Macao.

The “Vienna Memorandum” points out: the historic urban landscape acquires its exceptional and universal significance from a gradual evolutionary, as well as planned territorial development over a relevant period of time through processes of urbanization, incorporating environmental and topographic conditions and expressing economic and socio-cultural values pertaining to societies. As such, conservation and conservation of the historic urban landscape comprises the individual monuments to be found in conservation registers, as well as ensembles and their significant connections, physical, functional and visual, material and associative, with the historic typologies and morphologies. “Macao Historic Urban Landscape Conservation Research” focuses on the situation of high-intensity development and construction in Macao and starts from the visual connection between World Cultural Heritage and its broader surroundings. The research proposes the design management strategies of overall style control in historic areas, building height regulation, and landscape conservation， and the establishment of a landscape management system for landscape impact assessment and beautiful landscape awards, so that the characteristics of the historic urban landscape of Macao can be maintained and the conservation of the outstanding universal value of World Cultural Heritage amid rapid development can be ensured.

“Macao Historic Urban Landscape Conservation Research” discusses the strategy of preservation management for World Cultural Heritage and for historic areas, respectively; it also considers in-depth the quality of the living environment of Macao residents, real issues of tourism development and heritage conservation, and comprehensive promotional strategies for cultural tourism and creative industries.