A review on historic building conservation : a comparison between Hong Kong and Macau systems

Concerns on historic buildings emerged with accelerating urbanization and increasing population of Hong Kong have been raised by the public since 1970s, this has recently been increasing concerned due to several failures of historic buildings conservation cases. Comparing Hong Kong and Macau, both with similar geographical locations and histories, Macau seems made better efforts on historic building conservation especially after 2005. This paper aims to identify the differences in histories, mechanisms and policies of heritage conservation in Hong Kong and Macau, and thus suggests measures to Hong Kong and Macau for improving historic building conservation systems. Case studies are used to explore the differences between Hong Kong and Macau and its implications to historic conservation development. It is found that Hong Kong and Macau have many differences in legislation development, organizational hierarchies, protection scopes, protection and reuse methods. Macau has laid more emphasis on the development of tourism by conservation and reuse of cultural heritage while Hong Kong tends to introduce modern technologies in forming the combination of modern world and historic features.