Praia Grande, Macau

I was fortunate to walk the praya grande promenade in the late 80's before it was completely landlocked by the crappy sai-van lakes reclamation scheme.

This was a beautiful boulevard flanked by many beautiful and mysterious old chinese and european mansions. Full of charm, class and history.

Since then sadly its been compromised and vandalised by a succession of insensitive and vulgar developments, including the incredibly badly built new bridge to Taipa, or the re-working of the 3 exquisite old white mansions overlooking the bay into the usual brash, brown granite clad, and glass balconied rubbish we see so much of in HK.

Back then there were 5 or 6 decaying, but wonderful art deco era houses up Rua de Republica, and a host of others on The Praya Hill. Watched most of them fall one by one since then.

Whatever about town planning and conservation in HK, Macau is even worse, believe me. I lived there for 4 years.