I wish to call the bluff of whoever is responsible for "replacing the Cospicua eyesore" (The Sunday Times, January 29). To my eyes, Il-Mixtla ta' Bormla is anything but a sore. It is one of the most pleasant corners of Cottonera, a sizable grove of mature ficus and pine trees, a dollop of green to the glacis in front of St Helen's bastion.

It is being described (by the developers) as a "long-abandoned area ... currently notorious for dumping and a magnet for illicit substance abusers". Nonsense. The grove is used regularly as a recreational area by Cospicua residents - people walk their dogs or take a stroll there, and on summer afternoons women sit in the shade playing tombola.

True, some see it as a convenient dumping ground, and at night the place has its fair share of shady characters. I would have thought, however, that the right solution would be to address the dumping and the drug abuse - not remove the grove!

I do not expect many to worry about the loss of Il-Mixtla ta' Bormla. To people who have never bothered to look, Cospicua is just a bunch of shoddy post-war flats inhabited by social cases. To me, however, this 'replacement' is a symbol of our pig-headed planning policies.

First, it is the latest in a long list of horrors spoiling the setting of the some of the most wonderful fortifications in Malta, the Margherita and Cottonera Lines. Second, it replaces a beautiful grove of mature trees with a wasteland of concrete, red paving, and 'street furniture' from Noddy's Toytown. Third, it is a blatant waste of taxpayers' money (half a million liri of it to be precise), money that would be more wisely spent on much-needed restoration works in Cottonera.

But then, this is a country obsessed with construction and progetti, a surreal picture where the concrete mixer becomes an end in itself.