Of broken promises cities are made. Gambling, urbanisation, and belonging in Macau

Abstract

Few places on Earth have experienced recent economic growth at the same level as Macau during the years of its gambling boom, which lasted for about a decade from when the first casinos after the liberalisation started to emerge in 2004. It may come as no surprise that, through gambling, the city was transformed under a broader strategy of human and urban ‘management’ in which neoliberal rationalities mediated investment, social welfare, and city development. A lot of ink has been devoted to analysing the economic, political, and social impact of Macau’s gambling governance throughout the golden years of the liberalisation and beyond, but few works have offered a platform to ‘voice’ lived experience. Drawing on ethnographic work, this article documents the reactions of Macau locals ( gentes de Macau, 本地人, bun dei jan) to the potent wave of gambling-led economic growth and urbanisation, adding a layer of novelty and complexity to this debate. It re-evaluates this incredible moment in Macau’s contemporary history under the notion of the right to the city, as argued by Lefebvre and other urban theorists (Jacobs, Harvey, Massey), who see this as the right to claim a shaping power over the processes of urbanisation that affect the ways in which cities are made and remade. Ultimately, the paper argues that, despite material accumulation, the people of Macau felt somewhat dispossessed of ways to influence the course of development and robbed of their sense of belonging and city ‘ownership’.