In a country as small and densely populated as Malta, space is the biggest luxury of all to have. That is what makes public spaces all the more important for everyone to enjoy.
Many people are already left wanting when it comes to public space that they can enjoy in peace and quiet, although there has been good work done over the past few years to rehabilitate more and more areas for the public to be able to enjoy.
But that good work is undone when those same public spaces end up being taken up by private businesses – sometimes with the blessing of authorities, but other times without.
The Malta Independent has reported two cases of the latter in the past month.
The first is in a recently revamped public square in Mellieha, where a new restaurant called Espiral, which is owned and run by powerhouses db Group, decided to take up a chunk of the square without having the necessary permits to do so.
Indeed, this was a classic case of ‘better ask for forgiveness, rather than permission’, as the restaurant placed tables and chairs in the public square without having any permits to do so, and then simply applying with the Planning Authority to get them sanctioned.
While the restaurant had planning permission to open, the original permit did not include the placement of any tables and chairs in the pedestrianised square in front of it.
A planning application for permission to place the tables and chairs was filed on 8 September by Robert Debono, the CEO of its owners DB Group, a week after the restaurant opened its doors to patrons.
The fact that the application is still pending a decision however did not appear to stop the restaurant: a video posted to its own Facebook page shows that the tables and chairs in question were in place by the following month – October.
The second, reported in yesterday’s The Malta Independent shows how a café set up a number of glass houses filled with tables and chairs in a public space in Dock 1 in Cospicua, despite not having a planning permit to do so.
DATE Art Café, situated just behind the American University of Malta in Triq Dom Mintoff in Cospicua, set up no less than 14 glass houses filled with tables and chairs on the public steps which lead down to the bridge which connects the two sides of Dock 1.
While the owner said that the glass houses are temporary structures, the fact remains that the placement of the initial tables and chairs, which take up the bulk of the public staircase, was done without a planning permit.
These are two isolated cases, but the problem of private enterprises taking up public spaces – particularly with platforms and tables and chairs – has been long-documented and is only getting worse.
It has to be the responsibility of the authorities to protect the little public space that we do have so that the general public can enjoy it in peace and quiet, rather than selling it off to private interests.
And where those private interests just decide to make public areas theirs without having any permission to do so, then the solution is quite simple: remove them and restore access to the area in question for the enjoyment of everyone.