DISCOURSE ON THE CITY : IDENTITY FORMATION AND URBAN CHANGE IN CONTEMPORARY MACAO
This article examines how debates about Macao’s urban form and its social meaning—what I term a “discourse on the city”—have shaped identity formation amid dramatic late-twentieth-century urban change. Drawing on two moments in Macao’s urban discourse: (i) Manuel da Silva Mendes’s 1929 critique of m...
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| Published in: | Review of Culture |
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| Format: | Articles |
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Instituto Cultural de Macau
July 2002
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| Online Access: | https://www.icm.gov.mo/rc/viewer/pdfViewerParts/40003/2677 |
| Summary: | This article examines how debates about Macao’s urban form and its social meaning—what I term a “discourse on the city”—have shaped identity formation amid dramatic late-twentieth-century urban change. Drawing on two moments in Macao’s urban discourse: (i) Manuel da Silva Mendes’s 1929 critique of modern destruction of a hybrid Portuguese-Chinese urban fabric, nostalgic for a recognizable national character and wary of administrative incompetence; and (ii) the September 1998 International Conference on The Culture of Metropolis in Macao, which framed modernity, heritage, and urban planning within a program to “establish a past behind the future.” Through historical-anthropological analysis of texts, conference proceedings, and local writings, the article tracks how speakers turn urban change into a test case for social and political critique, and how the city’s identity is imagined as both a memory and a project.
Findings: despite changes in political and economic regimes, Macao’s discourse reveals persistent anxiety that modernization may erase a distinctive, hybrid urban identity and social fabric. Yet, unlike Mendes’s elegiac lament, late-twentieth-century discourse negotiates preservation and development, arguing that identity can be sustained through planning, heritage strategies, and inclusive urban narratives. The paper locates identity formation in Macao’s urban change as a continuous dialogue between memory and modernization, shaping policy directions and public culture into the twenty-first century. |
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| ISSN: | 1682-1106 |