Casino development and urban transformation in Macau

In 2008, Grand Lisboa casino opened its doors in downtown Macau. The eye-catching structure, radiant gold and ‘pineapple-shaped’, as residents mused, was one of the city’s newest gambling venues since the sector opened to foreign competition in 2002. It was but a glimpse of the extent of the urban and socio-economic transformations on which the city had embarked since it departed the Portuguese colonial era and became a Special Administrative Region (SAR) of the People’s Republic of China (RPC) in 1999.