The planning process in Malta is one of a kind. One would wish to compare and contrast it with that which is found in other countries to see what great gaps it hides.
One big gap is the absence in any planning application process of an overall assessment – the cumulative impact on the community and the surrounding landuse. This is absent in Maltese processing. As a result we get Paceville. And we get Tigne.
The Mepa or PA boards focus only on the application at hand without considering the applications or potential applications next door and the cumulative impact of all these.
The Malta-style of processing also fights shy of examining the business plan upon which an application is based. We are so virginal, you see, and we do not want to know the developer’s business secrets.
But as a result of this we get that huge hole in Ta’ Xbiex that was meant to become the Metropolis skyscraper – and that was meant to be as big, if not bigger than the Townsquare development.
And we also get (or actually do not get) the failed development of Mistra Village – even though in this case it is a bon because we would have got four tall towers on top of the ridge. Here too, despite the pushing for a permit by such people as Ann Fenech, now president of the Nationalist Party, the project never got off the ground.
The Planning Authority has now approved four towers at Mriehel and one at Tigne. We are now in the realm of building offices, no longer residences, or at least a mix of the two. Different business plans come into play here.
There was a time, some years ago, when Malta had many residences, some unoccupied, and not so many offices. Then that changed – Smart City was built on a concept mixing office space and possibly residential along with commercial.
Other building applications came up for office space. Tigne Point or rather MIDI projected a building solely for offices. Others adapted residential and turned them into offices.
Others did not want to go such a long way to Xghajra for Smart City and chose to create offices anywhere they could. It was in this way, and certainly with no overall plan or government direction, that Mriehel gradually turned from being a rather messy private-owned industrial area to be a hub of offices beginning by MFSA, and continuing with DLT, Melita, etc.
The four towers concept plays right into this. One would have liked the public to get an idea of the business plan behind this application to be reassured there is hard planning here. Or are we running the risk of creating an over-abundance of office space?
Ta’ Xbiex has become a hub for online gaming and insurance, turning a largely residential area into an office area, with no planning at all but the gradual encroachment and spreading out of the sector.
The concept behind Smart City also spoke of a designated area with proper infrastructure laid on before any construction. The developments we have been speaking about turned this upside down, in the sense they adapted buildings and turned them into offices with the infrastructure sometimes coming in later.
Smart City then lacked a very vital element and today, years after it was inaugurated, it still lacks it. When it was conceived, the government of the time committed itself to giving it a good road connection but then did nothing about it. Today, Smart City is as remote as it has always been.
But then this non-fulfilment of road connections is a failure that the PN governments did with other commitments. When the Manoel Island – Tigne Point brief was published in 1990, it clearly stated the government would provide a road link between the Kappara Junction and the Gzira seafront. In 26 years this weas not done and even now that the Kappara Project is under way, there is no mention of cutting a road linking the area to the Gzira seafront. The result is the daily frustrating queuing near the Kiosk.