The changing face of Sliema

There is a Latin inscription round the large clock on a wall of the Old University facing the courtyard of the Old Lyceum in Valletta. It reads, in English translation: "Times change and we change with them". So do townscapes. A typical example is the townscape of Sliema.

Persons of middle and old age remember the elegance and aesthetic beauty of housing in Sliema. Especially 'on the front' as the road facing the sea is popularly called. The terraced houses of the interior of the town had equally attractive fronts.

During the last few decades the townscape has been littered with cranes of various sizes, colours and shapes. The cause of all this intrusion on the scene? Houses that were spacious, comfortable and obviously planned for elegant easy living were bought by entrepreneurs. Why did the owners sell their homes? Children grow up, they marry and set up homes of their own. The original house thus becomes too large for the old couple.

The owners are easily enticed to exchange their comfortable home for a large sum of money and a flat in the new block substituting the old house - quite an advantageous exchange especially their paid up stay in a good hotel until their promised flat is ready.

At the end of the day the couple find they shall be forced willy-nilly to dispose of some of their large furniture as the flat would not be large enough to contain the large items.

In the process the entrepreneurs become construction speculators. They ask the architects to plan multi-storeyed block of flats. Perhaps in most cases 'cubicles' would be a more apt term. Circumstances are such that the area thus acquired does not permit rooms to be as large as heretofore. It follows as night follows day that furniture would have to be much smaller to fit the new-sized 'rooms'. In fact the area of a room in the purchased villa or house is taken up by two rooms on the vertical level and another two on the horizontal level. This is what is being done in practice.

Where a lift is installed in the block, its size and the width of the adjacent stairs allow only small-size furniture to be carried into the flats above ground level. The result is that middle-income people wanting to move to Sliema will have to be satisfied with Lilliputian houses at grossly inflated prices.

MEPA's responsibility

Some of these so-called 'social' houses are in effect anti-social because of their lack of adequate light and ventilation. And all this in spite of rules and regulations of the Malta Environment and Planning Authority. This august institution provides for the minimum measurements. There are times, and frequently, when the minimum becomes smaller during construction.

MEPA may order a stop when the irregularity is noticed. On the other hand some speculator may decide to take a chance. There have been cases where instead of demolition of the offending part of the construction the speculator is ordered to pay a fine. It may also be a heavy one. The speculator may make his calculations and decide to pay and leave things as they were. His intention is to transfer the fine to the price of each unit of the block.

The old rent laws, which by the look of things no government is willing to amend to be in line with today's prices, does not encourage the landlord to offer his premises at the miserable pre-1939 level of rents. This apart from the unacceptable obligation of the landlord to pay for repair of wooden balconies, to mention one instance of the rights of the lessee and obligations of the lessor.

Where the premises offered for lease are new the rent is so exorbitant that the couple about to marry prefer to own their own house. The practice nowadays is for the couple to ask for a bank loan; this may be for a small house or a medium one depending on the salary of one of the parties or of both.

Some couples plan to have just one baby, or at most two. This is because they cater for just one nursery. This is probably why the birthrate has been declining.

At the end of the day all this means that people's lifestyle has had to adjust to having small houses. This in turn accounts for the fact that the face of Sliema has been changing for the worse.

New townscape

Nowadays the elegant townscape of the past has made way for box-like frontage, in most cases. And where the front is attractive the interior is often not in keeping with the promise given by a look at the front. The interior is different from the front elevation both in style and size. And to think that such a disappointing result has substituted a lovely villa that was lost for ever from the Maltese landscape.

On the credit side, the lovely new promenade along the long Tower Road provides a pleasant walk and a meeting place for strollers in practically all seasons. This promenade is further enhanced by the two 'light' modern sculptures by Richard England.The fairy lights on the trees along the promenade were devised imaginatively.

Would that the general aspect of the housing along Tower Road was planned with the same degree of aesthetic value.

Perhaps it is not too late for MEPA to raise the standard of requirements for new construction all along and inside the modern town of Sliema.