Residents of Żurrieq are fighting to stop a planning control application that if approved, could see a rural landscape in the area of in-Nigret covering just over 12,000 sqmtransformed into yet more apartment blocks.

Theland was included within the confines of the development boundary through the (often irrational) Rationalization Scheme of 2006.

Land included within the development zone through the rationalization scheme was not allocated any setplanning parameters in terms of permissiblebuilding height or even road alignment. Instead, landowners or developers would have to apply for these parametersthrough a separate planning control application for each zone. These applications would then be decided by the Planning Authority.

The application submitted to the Planning Authority covering the land in Nigret is just as bland and unsustainable as most planning control requests have beenfor sites included in the 2006 rationalization scheme. Rather predictably, it isthe same failed recipe that has led to the mushrooming of soulless urbanized spaces void of greenery and any sense of community, barricading the (once open) peripheries of towns all over Malta. 

In a nutshell, all the existing attributes that make-up the distinctness as well as aesthetic and cultural value of this site would be lost. The agriculturallandstretchingacross terraced fields will be obliterated and replaced with three massive blocks each made up of dozens of 5-storey apartment buildings. The winding rural roads flankedwith irregular dry-stone rubble walls will be demolishedand the carob trees dotting the open fields, felled. The curious circular stone demarcations flagged by residents, possibly dating back to the Medieval period, will also be wiped out through the proposed alignment.

The architect responsible for this proposal is George Pullicino, who was in facttheMinister of Rural Affairs and the Environment overseeing the whole rationalization process back in 2006. Back then, herepeatedly played down the whole rationalization scheme. In an opinion piecehe’d penned in May 2006 he argued that the whole process was something required to ‘address anomalies that resulted from the 1989 exercise’, which saw land officially apportioned into developable and non-developable. He described anomalies as ‘areas of land which were left outside of the development zones, but which are surrounded on three sides by development within scheme’. He also went on to state that ‘the criteria [through which sites were chosen for rationalization] clearly specify that irrigated arable land and areas which are scheduled should not be released for development’. The intention behind the whole process, he maintained, was to address what would have otherwise been an ‘injustice’ against people who owned parcels of land that he impliedshould almost naturally be considered for development due to their stateor surroundings.

The scenic rural landscape of the site in Nigret can through no rational understanding be considered the type of anomaly that the then-Minister was describing, yet it was included within the development scheme. Now, thirteen years later, we find ourselves faced with the consequences of that decision exasperated further by an approach to(or lack of) urban planning that is solelyguided by maximization of profits.

In the proposed ‘masterplan’ coveringthis12,000sqm site, visual and environmental considerations are non-existent, with the proposal constituting only of three massive blocks plonked on a pristine sitewith car-flooded streets serving as the only ‘open space’. It is the shape one ends up with when focusing solely on fitting as many residential units as physically possible within a parcel of land.

The proposal even goes against the cabinet memo whichstates that for undivided sites included as part of the rationalization scheme which have an area that exceeds 5,000sqm, at least 15% of the land must be allocated as public open space. In this case, almost 1,800sqm of land should have beenreserved for the community as public open space – it was not.

The residents of Żurrieq are calling on the public to join them in voicing their objection. If you also agree that such a proposal should not be approved you maysubmit an objection either by sending an email to [email protected] siting the application number PC/00049/19 or by using a platform set up by NGO Moviment Graffitti at https://pa.movimentgraffitti.org/permit/15.

Tara Cassar is an architect focusing on planning policies and environmental issues related to land-use, active with a number of local eNGOs.

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