Spatial Planning Strategies for Urban Ecology and Heritage Conservation in Macau: An Investigation of Ultra-High-Density Cities

Urban ecology and heritage-protection space are important parts of urban land and should be highly emphasized in urban planning. Improving and upgrading the level of urban ecological and heritage-conservation space will directly affect the level of spatial quality of the built environment of the city. As a high-density city, Macau suffers from “urban diseases” such as a low per capita green space rate and poor quality of the human environment. Therefore, in order to solve this kind of urban disease, the green environment quality of Macau’s heritage space should be improved and more leisure and recreational space should be provided for urban residents. This paper examines the layout of cultural heritage open spaces in Macau and suggests strategies for planning the preservation and use of these critical resources. This study investigated the current status of open space resources in Macau’s offshore islands, cultural heritage space resources, eight Largo spaces (“Largo” is a unique term for urban public open space in Macau) in Macau’s historic city, site-based cultural heritage open spaces, and the current status of rural walking trails in the offshore islands’ ecological reserves, and used GIS technology to visualize the survey results. Last, this paper investigates the planning strategy for the sustainable use of Macau’s outlying island ecological reserves and proposes a “green network” to connect the main mountains, green areas, and coastal wetlands in Coloane with the natural space. In view of the heritage-conservation space of the Macau Peninsula, this paper proposes the planning strategy of constructing linear landscape and cultural routes and planning characteristic heritage streets and alleys. Through using cultural heritage buildings as nodes and connecting pedestrian streets and alleys, the planning mode of combining heritage attractions and streets and alleys is realized.