Not staying mum about Mepa reform proposals

Over the past week, you cannot have missed the adverts in the papers begging us all to send in our responses to the Malta Environment and Planning Authority Reform proposals. Were you not moved by their oh-so-beautiful colours and by their oh-so-courteous wording? If you have been a sufficiently good boy and replied, can you share the dose of wisdom you sent in with the rest of us as well?

Alas, no, I have not been in touch at all with Castille on the matter. You are, I know, an unusually respectful and polite woman for your age, and you may think it downright churlish of me, who until not so many years ago was adviser to the Prime Minister, to have kept back my computer from humming in some jolly tune on the subject to my old official lair.

Or you may even be thinking that I am just being peevish, perhaps because the drafter of the report has so blatantly and completely ignored the two main alternative proposals I had modestly made on the subject in these columns.

But no, those are not the real reasons for my naughty silence. At the cost of being again accused of rhetorical delay before coming to the point, I still feel bound to cite yet another non-reason why I have not been eagerly re-proposing my views on the topic. An architect friend of mine told me he was convinced that the brilliant PR people whom the government has employed since the last election are playing a new ball game with us. They have noticed that we have noticed what the game was that they were previously playing, and so they have changed their strategy.

The pattern of the old game was roughly as follows. Austin Ugly-Face Gatt would be sent out to announce some pretty bad bit of news. A popular outcry ensues. Then Nice-Uncle Lawrence steps in and alleviates, just a little bit, the pain. Mintoff, as those of my age, or not too much less, will well remember, used to play this game very often, with himself cast in both the roles of Ugly-Face and Nice-Uncle.

The new game, according to my architect friend, is the reverse. This time the Prime Minister has himself proposed what looks like, on the face of it, an ugly return to the model of the nasty Lorry Sant days. Policymaking, a term left undefined in its implications, goes back to the politicians. Those of us involved in the making of the PN programme before 1987 had been very keen that an independent authority should be responsible for building permits.

The expected popular outcry is being resoundingly voiced by the stalwart likes of Michael Falzon (the architect of course, not the lawyer) and Martin Galea (executive chairman of Din L-Art Ħelwa). Now the rules of the new game lead us to suppose that the role of Nice-Face has been given to Mario de Marco. He will soften the retrograde look of the measure without really changing anything substantial.

Unlike my architect friend, I am not myself an addict of media conspiracy theories. The only reason why I did not send in comments on the Mepa reform proposals is that I still hold the position I had stated from the beginning. Tinkering would not do the job. Only a really radical change is worth discussing.

Do you not think it at least worthwhile re-stating without beating about the bush what was actually your practical suggestion, if you hold it to be still capable of being implemented?

My proposal really amounts to adopting the model, which I am reliably informed, is used in Spain among other countries. Basically, it consists in the authority establishing policies the principles of which are very clear to any right-minded architect, but which at the same time allow ample room for creativity and originality.

Then it is left to the architect to design within the space allowed by the policies. His projects do not have to be subjected to the often unimaginative scrutiny of middle-range officials. This level of the authority in Malta has very often been accused of being the domicile of the worst worms that have been eroding its reputation.

The buildings, however, are subjected to review by the relatively few but top quality experts retained on the authority's staff. Although the architect gets the benefit of any reasonable doubt, if there is manifest breach of policy, the punishment is merciless.

I am, of course, fully aware that such a scheme implies several difficulties. For instance, it would mean the replacement of a whole layer of staff by others of much rarer ascertained skills. Many more genuinely trained planners and others with a honed sensitivity in architectural philosophy will be needed, and that means that they will have to be groomed over a number of years.

The scores, if not hundreds, that would become redundant at the authority would have to be found other places where their talents and experience would not go to waste, for instance in care of the heritage, which is still lamentably understaffed.

However, the reform of Mepa is of such crucial importance to Malta, where land use and the quality of the built environment are the most decisive factors for economic development as well as for cultural identity, that it is worth the extensive commitment of recourses as well as deep thought that hard nuts require to be cracked.

Are you saying that your proposal could be taken on board as a second phase of the reform with the government's current report being taken as intentionally short term?

Yes. There is certainly time required for educating people's awareness of how their lives are affected by their bodily experience of the space that they inhabit.

The restructuring of Mepa should be an ideal response to that raised awareness.

Fr Peter Serracino Inglott was talking to Alessandra Fiott.