The effects of overdevelopment
Last week’s Sliema residents’ meeting inevitably focused on the problems of overdevelopment. There is no doubt that Sliema is one of the worst-hit areas in Malta but residents of towns such as Swieqi, Attard, Qawra, Xemxija and Marsascala have found...
Last week’s Sliema residents’ meeting inevitably focused on the problems of overdevelopment. There is no doubt that Sliema is one of the worst-hit areas in Malta but residents of towns such as Swieqi, Attard, Qawra, Xemxija and Marsascala have found that their once-peaceful neighbourhoods are similarly turning into concrete jungles.
The 2005 National Statistics Office census showed 53,000 vacant housing units, a shocking figure, even when 15 per cent that are badly damaged or used as summer houses are deducted. In spite of this glut, between 2005 and 2010, the Malta Environment and Planning Authority issued permits for 47,000 more units, 95 per cent of them apartments, increasing the number of empty properties to about 76,000, as confirmed by Mepa chairman Austin Walker.
The number of vacant units is destined to rise further as many approved permits have yet to be built and more mega projects are planned. Flimkien għal Ambjent Aħjar (FAA) maintains that the issue of overdevelopment urgently needs to be addressed. Should more apartments be approved? On what grounds can we justify the loss of more of our countryside or of our urban health?
Our politicians defend further development by quoting homeowners wishing to demolish their houses to provide apartments for their children. This justification was used in the 2006 rationalisation scheme when huge swathes of countryside were taken over for building hundreds of units by a single developer. So much for mum and dad! This also begs the question: If we are encouraging parents to provide for their offspring, who are the thousands of speculator apartments to be sold to? Not to foreign buyers since, in 2009, only some 300 sales involved foreigners. Mepa calculated that the annual requirement of new homes is about 2,000, yet, in 2005-2009 it approved 8-12,000 units per year! Who is to mop up the oversupply?
While Malta remains a free market economy fuelled by entrepreneurial zeal, the popular belief that the market should regulate itself mistakenly assumes it is only developers who bear the brunt of the risks. Contrary to this view, the Central Bank’s 2010 Financial Stability Report states that the current weakness in the property market poses a serious risk to the health of the Maltese financial sector due to the fact that property represents a high percentage of banks’ loan portfolios. This creates a dangerous exposure at a time when the property situation has led to a rise in defaulting loans.
Mepa’s failure to assume its responsibilities as a regulator, fuelling a “race to build” mentality with successive policies liberalising permits, not only ruined our towns and characteristic village cores but also ironically lead to a slowdown in purchases, with some foreign buyers reluctant to invest since the glut diminishes resale potential. The Central Bank confirms: “The additional supply of housing units may extend the period of lull in property prices”.
The argument that one has a “sacrosanct right to do what one likes with one’s own property” needs to be seen in the light of the greater good for the nation. Mepa has failed miserably in its duty to reconcile the rights of private property development with the right to good health.
Replacing houses by apartments has the double negative effect of bringing more cars into residential areas and of trapping their toxic fumes in urban canyons created when narrow streets are lined by tall buildings. These toxic emissions aggravate lung and coronary problems like asthma and emphysema as well as cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. International medical studies such as the Ucla research led by James Alderman proved that children living near heavy traffic suffer permanent lung damage, which can shorten life expectancy.
Furthermore, dust generated by quarries and building sites contributes to areas of Malta having the highest rate of hospitalisation for pulmonary complaints in the world (report by Martin Balzan, president of the Medical Association of Malta). Months of deafening noise and ground-shaking tremors accompanying urban redevelopment cause severe mental stress in neighbours and rob them of their light, air and quality of life – often needlessly when the many of the resultant flats remain unsold.
In addition to air and noise pollution, the loss of our countryside reduces the absorption of water into the aquifers, increases flooding and negatively impacts tourism.
Though encouraging, Mepa’s recent refusal of four permits on grounds of overdevelopment was based on the massing of units on those individual sites and not on the over-congestion of the area, which, we are told, is not to be taken into account, just as Transport Malta does not consider the increase in traffic generated by proposed developments.
The North Harbours Local Plan asserts: “Resolving an unacceptable transport situation and relieving congestion is seen as a key step towards improving the quality of life for residents.” Gridlocked Sliema, like Valletta, is now suffering the imposition of pedestrianisation together with the removal of scores of parking places without public consultation, adequate study or provision of alternatives. The elderly, who form the majority of both towns, are cruelly hit, often rendered prisoners in their own homes and inaccessible to basic services like grocery deliveries, maintenance services and even medical emergencies.
Already in 1992, the draft North Harbours Local Plan stated “many of the coastal belt residential areas have reached their environmental capacity and require a more restrictive approach to further developmental intensification”, urging against the replacement of houses by apartment blocks. Yet, the intervening 19 years saw exactly the opposite happening, ruining our towns and even rural jewels like Manikata, fulfilling Mepa’s own warning: “The environmental capacity concept implies that if an urban area is pushed beyond certain limits, there is a risk of destroying the very things that are valued and give the area its special character.”
Even if Mepa revises the local plans to slow down the rate of development - and there is no such commitment yet – years will pass before this is completed and implemented, during which time the situation will continue to deteriorate. FAA therefore urges the speedier option of the introduction of policies dampening overdevelopment while encouraging the rehabilitation of existing unused structures which, in turn, would provide work for the construction industry.
Given all of the above, surely both developers and the authorities realise that enough damage has been done and that a serious study of the excess property situation in Malta is overdue. Rather than increasing the property market, we need options and solutions to finally start improving it.
The author is spokesman for Flimkien għal Ambjent Aħjar.