Neighborhood scale emerging from the clustering of residential redevelopment applications in the historic district of Macao

The residential building stock constitutes an integral component of densely built-up, historic districts while posing major challenges to urban renewal and conservation. With peninsular Macao being such a case in point, this study aimed to examine the potential interaction of residential redevelopment by analyzing permit application records from 2014 to 2021. First, the covariates of building attributes were collated, and a logistic regression model was fitted to account for the expected effects of building age, building type (single or multiple units), lot area, and the number of units or vacancies on application propensity. Whether a residential site was located within an urban conservation area, however, did not have a significant effect. Second, random-labeling simulations of the inhomogeneous K-function were conducted for the case–control spatial point dataset for the scenarios with and without covariates. The simulation results detected statistically significant clustering, and visual inspection of the simulation envelopes revealed a neighborhood scale. In exploring the determinants of the clustering phenomenon, reference was drawn from local media coverage, while both positivist and constructivist understandings of scale were mobilized to triangulate our findings, which together suggest a nascent coalition of small-scale residential redevelopment situated in the broader arena of planning policy-making and governance.