The study of historic building conservation policy and measure: a comparison between Hong Kong and Macau

Abstract

After 1970s, the concerns about historic building emerged with accelerating urbanization and increasing population of Hong Kong. Recently, this topic has been discussed heatedly again due to several failures of Historic Buildings Conservation cases. While Macau, who is similar to Hong Kong in Geographical location and history, seems made better efforts on historic building conservation especially after 2005. This paper aims to describe the difference in history, mechanism and policy of heritage conservation of Hong Kong and Macau. Summary the merits and drawbacks of conservation measures of them, thus to suggest measures to Hong Kong and Macau about improving historic building conservation. Relevant information including history, geography and social aspects are collected to do comparison in terms of legislation and protection measures. It can be seen many difference in legislation development, organizational hierarchy, protection scope, protection and reuse method. In short, Hong Kong and Macau are two different systems on conservation of historic building: Macau lay more emphasis on development of tourism by conservation and reuse of cultural heritage; Hong Kong tends to introduce modern technology to forms combination of modern world and historic features.