The government’s urban development plan for “Eastern District 2” takes effect today after its promulgation in the Official Gazette (BO) yesterday, according to which green areas and those earmarked for other types of public open spaces will cover 373,719 square metres, a decrease of 47 percent from the 711,000 square metres proposed by the government during a public consultation on the plan’s draft in 2022.

According to the plan published yesterday, Eastern District 2 covers the 1.38-square-kilometre Zone A land reclamation area, which is earmarked to have a population of 96,000.

The Eastern District 2 draft urban development plan released for the 2022 public consultation proposed to further reclaim land in the waters between the peninsula’s north-eastern coast and Zone A’s north-western coast. The proposed additional reclaimed area earmarked for green areas would have covered 0.36 square kilometres.

The local government said during the 2022 public consultation that it had requested the central government’s permission for the proposed 0.36-square-kilometre reclamation project. If the central government had green-lighted the project, Eastern District 2 would have covered an area of 1.74 square kilometres.

Speaking to reporters last week, Secretary for Transport and Public Works Raimundo do Rosário did not elaborate on whether the central government had already made a decision on whether to green-light the proposed 0.36-square-kilometre reclamation project.

The plan published yesterday does not include the proposed 0.36-square-kilometre reclamation project, because of which green areas and areas for other types of public open spaces will only cover 373,719 square metres correspondingly.

Eastern District 2 has a total of 76 plots for construction development, according to the plan.

In line with the plan, Zone A has 49 plots earmarked for residential buildings, covering 433,649 square metres, around the same as the one proposed during the 2022 public consultation.

Zone A off the peninsula’s north-eastern coast is primarily being developed for public housing projects, where construction of three subsidised home-ownership scheme (HOS) estates is scheduled to be completed later this year.

Eastern District 2 is one of 18 subareas listed by Macau’s official urban master plan, which took effect in February 2022.

Eastern District 2 is the government’s first urban development plan for a subarea. 

This map promulgated in the Official Gazette (BO) yesterday shows the government’s “Eastern District 2” urban development plan.