The Valletta City Gate project is going ahead. That is a given. Are we however, still in time to address a major issue - the lack of parking spaces in Valletta? Renzo Piano is reported to have said that as long as people are offered parking spaces, they will continue to use their cars.

That may be true but there is also another angle to that argument. If people wish to use their cars and they don't find parking spaces, they will go elsewhere. In this scenario, what is going to happen to the city's commercial life? Do we want Valletta to end up as purely a tourist destination jam-packed with souvenir shops?

Mr Piano also said that architects need to dream and to be explorers and adventurers. Fair enough, but with all due respect to Mr Piano, I feel he has missed a golden opportunity to provide Valletta with a multi-storey car park underneath today's Freedom Square without affecting in any way the plans for a new Parliament, the opera house site and city "gate". And the beauty of this alternative is that not a single car will enter Valletta as access to and from this car park would be via the ditch. Provided this car park is large enough, we could even ban all cars from Valletta. Now how about that?

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