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The historical city of Macao has recently become one of the world’s centres for tourism and gaming. But growing traffic congestion in its narrow and old road network, especially in the city’s historic centre, raises concerns about the city’s traffic pollution, environmental impacts and negative effects on residents’ and visitors’ health. The purpose of this study is to address the possibility of mitigating emerging environmental problems with urban design solutions.

A review and background of the city’s evolution, from a Mediterranean-style town in the sixteenth century to its present status as one of the highest population density cities in the world, is first undertaken. The paper then critiques the urban layout that conditions current traffic and pollution trends.

High levels of pollution of particulate matters are created by a mixture of circumstances related to tall buildings along narrow roads, especially in the historic centre’s San Ma Lou Avenue, that limit ventilation and trap pollution. Green solutions that are known to effectively mitigate this problem, as well as contribute to enhancing the area’s carrying capacity, are discussed.

The originality of this paper lies in its critique of the environmental impact of rapid and overwhelming tourism-oriented development on the quality of the urban environment. It advocates urban design solutions based on experiences from other global tourist cities that, if implemented, will not damage the historic centre’s built environment and will contribute to a more liveable city for residents and better experience for visitors.

The purpose of this paper is to profile the Worldwide Hospitality and Tourism Themes (WHATT) theme issue ‘How can communities manage rapid tourism growth? The experience of Macao and other destinations?’ with reference to the experiences of the theme editor and writing team.

This paper uses structured questions to enable the theme editor to reflect on the rationale for the theme issue question, the starting point, the selection of the writing team and material and the editorial process.

The paper observes that involving authors with different academic and professional backgrounds in fields as diverse as urban planning, economics, transportation and heritage management is daunting but valuable. The outcomes of a broad-ranging collaboration yield fresh insights, a deeper understanding of the issues and an array of possible responses to the theme issue question.

The theme issue outcomes provide lines of enquiry for others to explore and reinforce the value of WHATT’s approach to collaborative working and writing.

The collaborative work reported in this theme issue offers a unified but contrarian response to the theme’s strategic question. Taken together, the collection of articles constitutes a provocative yet authorative call to action in response to the problems highlighted.