It’s funny how things change especially rapidly here in Malta. Things go from pie in the sky into tangible and concrete reality in the bat of an eye. The pun was very much intended. About 20-30 years ago, many were very concerned that Malta’s countryside was going to be razed as the building boom continued unabated.
Small villages such as Attard and Naxxar began mushrooming out as (relatively) cheap housing suddenly became affordable through government schemes and a jump in quality of life and spending power. These villages began to expand at such a rate that they are now almost touching the peripheries of older urban centres such as Mosta, Birkirkara and Qormi.
Back then, the consensus was that Malta needed to build upwards to prevent further sprawl. No real policy was ever drafted and the trend began. Building started to get taller and taller and the first real high rise tower appeared in 2001 as part of the Hilton project. For years after that, we witnessed the trend of town houses being knocked down to be replaced by square apartment blocks.
The next boom was that of high rise living complexes, one such example being in Tigne and another in Paceville, both of which are still being built. And lo and behold, before even knowing it, a high-rise tower boom seems to have exploded before it has even started.
The issue here is abundantly clear. Malta has simply never had a real in depth study and subsequent framework to use in dealing with the construction industry. The laws have never had time to catch up and that is simply down to the fact that we have never sat down to think things through properly.
The biggest problem is that no one ever seems to have anticipated the scale of volume that is being catered for today. But how real is that demand? The word on the street with estate agents is that these apartments are not being rented out as affordable living space for Maltese people, far from it. They seem to be targets for the rich who want holiday homes.
Various NGOs are now pleading with the government to reconsider its position. Independent MP Marlene Farrugia recently presented a moratorium on large projects until a masterplan is drawn up. And this makes sense. It still holds true that Malta needs to build upwards. But we cannot simply place projects here and there and every which were without really studying the impact on Malta’s skyline.
The NGOs are right. The impact on the skyline of Malta is going to be absolutely massive and indelible if this is not thought out properly. It might sound outrageous, but perhaps with Malta being so small, a holistic plan is needed to demolish buildings of no value in certain areas – and re-develop them en masse with, at least, appealing architecture.
Allowing different designs to just sprout out of nowhere will put an indelible mark on Malta’s unique beauty. Aside from this, we need to think about network and infrastructure. We need traffic management, we need order, we need things to work properly. It is indeed ironic to think that while Valletta was built as the most modern and efficient city in the world at the time, Malta has become much like the capital’s predecessor Mdina, an uncontrolled sprawl of random mazes and buildings stacked upon each other. We need to re-evaluate; realistically. High rises will be needed, btu we need to identify where we should put them, and not allow them to ruin Malta in the future.