The living ground: a walking ethnography of spatial justice in Macau’s Fai Chi Kei

This visual essay examines spatial justice in Fai Chi Kei, one of Macau's older residential neighbourhoods. Macau is usually described at a monumental scale, through its casinos and heritage sites. This essay works on foot instead, at the ground floor of the Edificio Weng Hoi housing complex. Beneath the residential blocks, a shop-lined arcade runs the length of the estate and wraps around a central park. People rest, talk, and linger here without needing a reason to be there. I call this arrangement a ‘Living Ground’. It is not a design feature but a shared understanding, sustained by daily use: without that use, the arcade would be no more than a passage between places. The essay argues that this form of spatial justice emerged through use rather than design, and that it is easily overlooked in accounts of the city written at a larger scale.