The magnificent restoration of Fort St Manoel should not be ruined by sacrificing every square inch of Manoel Island to “cementification”, the Din l-Art Ħelwa executive president said yesterday in an impassioned speech against unbridled construction.
We have become immune to shabbiness
While lauding the restoration work on Fort Manoel, which Simone Mizzi said was a likely candidate for a World Heritage Monument listing, she expressed concerns that the developing hand that saved it might now bury it with the proposal to build some 470 apartments and a medley of residential and commercial spaces.
Addressing DLĦ’s annual general meeting, she said all members of the heritage organisation expected the planning authority board and its planners tochampion the cause of the visual integrity of Manoel Island and its historicmonuments.
The unbridled “building binge” of the last decades has given the island a legacy described by Ms Mizzi as Malta’s ‘new built heritage’.
A combination of forces, mainly chaotic unplanned growth and lack of awareness of the importance of retaining good cultural landscape by Malta’s leaders and planners has resulted in the loss of a great part of the island.
“The sights that greet us and our visitors on a daily basis are mainly made up of unfinished or neglected developments, incredulous colour schemes, inappropriate adjacencies, and degraded urban and rural areas,” Ms Mizzi charged.
“Our vision is filled with endless rows of metal fronted garages with overlying apartments, empty showrooms, and our valleys are given over to still more cement... The bad, or rather the sad, has become difficult to exclude and we have become immune to shabbiness and do not question it.” However, Ms Mizzi said she was confident that with the new mindset that imbued the Mepa Board, insensitive mistakes of the past would today not be repeated.
She said there was now recognition of the urgency to halt the“uglification” of Malta, which she said was better late than never.
Ms Mizzi heaped praise on Environment Minister Mario de Marco who said last week that European funds were available for St Elmo and St Angelo forts, while the National Environmental Policy indicated that €2 billion were being dedicated to environmental upgrades by 2020.
The Environment Policy needs to be embraced by all involved. It needed determined action to be taken now to prevent further losses of the islands’ scenic qualities.
“This comprehensive document, if embraced by all, and if implemented in its excellent detail should put an end to the environmental deficit,” Ms Mizzi said.
She welcomed the new fiscal and monetary packages aimed at the restoration and rehabilitation of scheduled buildings adding that she hoped these could be extended beyond Urban Conservation Areas.