Harbour plans for whom?

Remember the moat around Valletta, the breakwater at St Elmo, and the 20, nay, 100, harbour projects? It's only a few weeks since politicians were falling over themselves with glossy brochures and artists' impressions, yet it all feels so distant. Which is just as well, because we can now settle back to mundane reality and single digit numbers. The Albert Speers can be wheeled back in, printers can go back to advertising, and artists to their art.

My daily walk takes me from Cospicua, down to Kalkara and along the waterfront, through Vittoriosa, and back home. It's a short walk, not more than half an hour on a sluggish day. Enough, however, to make one think about the meaning of 'waterfront regeneration', of which the Vittoriosa promontory can be considered a laboratory.

One side, Galleys Creek, has been 'regenerated', while that facing Kalkara is presumably degenerate. The two shores are in total distinction, and they are also physically separated. The setting up of the yacht marina and the new buildings adjacent to St Angelo effectively divided what used to be a fairly continuous shore into two segments, (dis)connected by a narrow passage and a guarded and CCTV-monitored tunnel.

The 'regeneration' of waterfronts usually involves a complete change of use, and therefore of significance. In our case, the Kalkara side is what we may call a 'mixed use' space. The buildings along the inlet house a number of activities - boat repair, two metal-table-and-chairs-type bars, and boċċi and regatta clubs.

The shore itself is used for access to the boats moored in the bay - mostly frejgatina-type, with a very few small sailing boats. It is also used for fishing, barbecues, and bathing. Early in the morning in the spring months, locals can be seen combing the shoreline, hoping to harpoon (using very long purpose-made tridents) cuttlefish and occasionally octopus that venture close enough.

As one manoeuvres through the narrow passage on the St Angelo side, one encounters a completely different space. It is less varied, less seasonal, and infinitely more genteel. The Vittoriosa waterfront is given over to two types of activities. First, that linked to yachts and especially the larger gin palaces, which is a totally alien world to most of us. Not that we don't try to appropriate it - it's always amusing to hear people declare how much a yacht costs, or share an anecdote about some profligate owner. If you can't own the yacht, at least you can know it. A bit like bird watching really, where birds are gazed at and converted into records that are written down, 'kept' (i.e. owned) by the birdwatcher, and usually traded on a market known as ornithology. Binoculars, which enable this process of conversion and appropriation, have become the symbol of bird watching.

Which raises the point of visuals, the second type of leisure that occupies visitors to the Vittoriosa waterfront. It is telling that the restored buildings along the front are actually just façades - as at Valletta Waterfront. The Caraffa Stores, the only building fully to retain its beautiful arched interior, is used for art exhibitions - again, a visual type of interaction.

The composite view (of restored façades, sea, and yachts) is what matters here, and the restaurants and cafes are constructed in such a way as to take it in to best effect. One giveaway is that staff are usually apologetic when the outside tables are taken. It all works like some sort of Cinecittà, and I am not surprised that the Galleys Creek waterfront was used as a visual backdrop for the 2002 The Count of Montecristo and Spielberg's Münich.

The contrast between the two waterfronts could not be more striking. The soundscape, for one, is different. On the 'regenerated' side, the subtle hum of super yacht engine rooms and the creak of sailing masts vies with the tinkle of wine glasses. Foreign and standard Maltese accents are typical. On the Kalkara side, loud male banter is daily life around the boċċi and regatta clubs. The place is very noisy on summer evenings, when one of the bars puts out speakers and, since last summer, a big-screen TV. Those swimming and barbecuing are usually from Cottonera, and the soundscape is one of local accents. The point is that we are talking two worlds here.

We all chuckled when Mintoff pinned a bunch of makeshift drawings on the Palace doors in Valletta in 1998 and told the press that the people of Cottonera were about to be robbed of their waterfront. I dare say he had a point. In spite of all the impact assessments and reports, 'regeneration' seems inevitably to bring about the replacement of one use - and therefore one set of users - by another. I have no doubt that if and when the Kalkara waterfront gets spruced up, the tridents and the barbecues will go.

It's worth keeping in mind that throughout the history of our harbour, access to the waterfront in the Three Cities and Valletta was, at the best of times, strictly controlled and often denied. Cospicua had a working waterfront of some strategic importance, which until recently was sealed off behind a high wall. In Vittoriosa, the British limited access to the waterfront to a few annual special occasions. The story goes that the gate outside the Naval Bakery was built to measure to allow the annual religious procession with statues to just scrape through. One should not overstate the point, in the sense that these waterfronts were in large part populated by workers from the Cottonera area.

In any case, it seems to me that, even as locals are for the first time in years savouring their sea, they are doing so under circumstances which threaten to spoil the fun. The tailored dimensions of the gate may be redundant, but a 24-hour guard has now been installed just outside it, ironically close to a plaque commemorating the 'granting back to local families' of the waterfront. No one is actually stopped from entering, but the point is that someone somewhere has the keys to the waterfront and access is as controlled as it ever was. In any case, it is well known that the techniques of spatial segregation are not limited to gates and walls - social factors are equally effective.

Some sort of synergy must be sought between our harbour waterfronts and the maritime towns behind them. Failing that, we will have to settle for the façades and the soulless spaces of the artists' impressions.

mafalzon@hotmail.com