Valletta the bland capital

Last week, fellow columnist Mark Anthony Falzon urged us to rally around the banner of leopard-print panties and to resist the transformation of Valletta into the Capital City of Bland. I couldn’t agree more. Falzon’s call to arms was brought about by the sniffy reaction to the monti’s proposed relocation to Ordinance Street. The news has brought about a fit of the vapours from various quarters, and from some esteemed NGOs.

Valletta is fast turning into Vanilla Valletta – sterile and devoid of local character and colour

With lips pulled tightly in disapproval, the Nationalist mayor of Valletta told us that Valletta’s image is under “serious threat” from the relocation of the monti to a site near the capital’s entrance. Alexiei Dingli – the ultimate arbiter of what is tasteful and a valiant warrior in the battle against anything tacky, is the same man who gave us Peter Andre as a cultural ambassador for Valletta.

I can only assume that the Valletta mayor was rather frazzled after playing Andre’s Mysterious Girl on a loop for the past few months, for him to weigh in about what is tasteful at this point. And when Dingli expressed concern about the impression the monti would give when important foreign delegations visited Parliament, I got even more irritated.

As if a few stalls are going to repel foreign delegations and have them running to catch the first plane out of here. It’s more likely that the awful broken pavements in the capital, the pedestrian death-trap that is the bus terminus or the utter sterility of a once bustling city will get them down.

This is not just my opinion. Over the last couple of years foreign visitors who have made frequent stays to Valletta, have commented on the way it is has been transformed into a cookie-cutter copy of so many other cities abroad. You know the sort – the ones where you get a big high street with scores of international franchises and chains.

There are very few outlets or shops with a local feel left – everything is bland and rather uniform (except for the paving stones). Long-time residents of the city have fled the city with a variety of factors contributing to pushing them out.

You have to try living or working in Valletta to understand how difficult it is to face the daily inconveniences of simply getting around the place. Try getting to the area near Hastings Garden by car. The access route must have been designed by a maze-maker. And if it’s such a hassle for residents to get to their own homes, you can imagine how reluctant tradesmen and service-providers are to make their way into the capital. Most of them charge more to do this.

The small shops which used to serve residents well are also being ousted as resident-customers leave the city. The rising price of real estate and the sheer inconvenience of living in a place which is hard to access, hard to get around and expensive to live in, means Valletta would be the last place young Maltese couples would choose to live in. It’s become a city for tourists and expats, and not for the Maltese.

I attribute much of this to the way major projects in the capital have been geared mostly towards attracting tourists and not for the convenience of residents – the ones who keep the city alive. Take the Renzo Piano Parliament project for example. I’m not going into the merits of the design – that is subjective. There are some who see in it an inspiring piece of modern architecture and others who view it as a massive, jarring intrusion. Different folks, different strokes.

However – in terms of function – what exactly is the new parliamentary building going to contribute to the life of the locals? It’s going to house MPs and their offices (well, a few of them anyway), freeing up space at the Palace which will be restored to its full glory. And there may be a couple of exhibition spaces somewhere in the nether regions of the building. Thanks for nothing.

The money being thrown at the project could have been spent in a thousand other ways for the benefit of residents – and the MPs could still have had their precious Parliament without playing havoc with the access route into Valletta. As it is, they got the iconic building, a barren square with a statue of Grandmaster Jean de Vallette, and strict instructions not to get close to the Piano Parliament – because foreigners might be distressed because of a little local colour or a few market stalls.

This top-down approach will eventually result in Valletta becoming a ghost town/museum solely for tourists. They will pop in for day trips, “ooh” and “ah” at the Piano Parliament, take in some of the omnipresent Knights of Malta who seem to monopolise every aspect of our history and sip their overpriced cappuccinos. Maltese people will give the capital a wide berth and it will continue to exist as a sort of historical Maltese Disneyland.

I see so many parallels with Venice in this regard. As tourists amassed upon Venice year after year, the place became crowded, real estate prices soared and residents left. The few who remain feel as if it’s some sort of park which tourists visit and which can practically be closed up at night, as no one lives there. In 2009, residents held a mock funeral to symbolise the city’s decline, followed by another event a year later, in which they handed out maps and free ‘entrance tickets’ to ‘Veniceland’.

I hope we won’t get to that point with Valletta, which is fast turning into Vanilla Valletta – sterile and devoid of local character and colour.

cl.bon@nextgen.net.mt