Planning at the crossroads

Some months back, The Sunday Times of Malta (October 28) published an article which I wrote to mark the 20th anniversary of the Maltese planning system. In the article, I had noted that planning in Malta has reached an important crossroads.

The remit of design judgement should be left with independent design reviewers

The past months were also characterised by a change in government, which has brought with it a change in direction with regard to the Malta Environment and Planning Authority. Planning and environmental functions shall be split, necessitating a reformulation of the Planning Act.

This reformulation should be seen as an opportunity to enshrine design quality as a key cornerstone within this law.

The only reference to design in the current law is to ‘aesthetics’, which is often reduced to ‘style’. Clearly, this is a very limited perspective of what constitutes good design, which is much broader in scope, encompassing the setting of sustainable targets and urban design objectives.

Establishing a clear understanding of design quality within the law would give it the significance it truly deserves in the weighing of ‘material considerations’ during decision-making.

The above latches onto another important discussion that deals with the fundamentals of the planning system.

Our system requires decision-makers to start with the consideration of plans and policies but also allows for ‘administrative discretion’, allowing them – but no planning officers – to give due regard to other material considerations. If the consideration is material enough, a departure from the plans and policies is warranted, so long as it is justified.

Discretion is, therefore, not simply policy interpretation; discretion implies policy deviation. What this effectively means is that, unlike other European regulatory planning systems, our policies are there to primarily provide guiding principles. They are not the rule of law. If they were the rule of law, decision-makers would not be able to deviate from them.

What we appear to have done in practice is a reversal of the above.

Some planning officers exercise discretion whereas others do not, creating confusion in the process while decision-makers have very rarely applied their discretion in the name of quality.

We have further overloaded the system with a plethora of policies that fail to consider the most important urban scale: our streets. We have therefore tried to de facto implement a quasi-regulatory planning system without, however, having the legal framework in place allowing us to do so.

The result has been a planning system loaded with uncertainties, which have undermined its credibility and naturally attracted criticism from all fronts. A cursory look around you may help you judge whether the numerous policies or the strict adherence to policies – particularly their quantitative element – have worked. You will most likely realise that these have, in fact, given us developments that respect numbers but that are soulless, devoid of architectural merit and that, at worst, have killed our towns and villages.

We should, therefore, now take this opportunity to produce a slimmer policy book, which centres on the achievement of qualitative considerations.

We should not try to introduce a regulatory system. Planning systems are formulated from different legal and administrative traditions and they further become culture-specific. Instead, we should celebrate our discretionary system, which allows for flexibility in order to arrive at the best possible decision. Indeed, other planning systems around the world are amending their regulatory systems to integrate discretionary practices – directing the latter, however, towards quality achievement.

A planning authority should focus on holistic strategic planning issues. Its officers should, indeed, undergo design training, such that they may fully appreciate good design, but the remit of design judgement should be left with independent design reviewers.

Design review is more than an Aesthetics Board. It involves the consideration of wider design parameters that find their place within the assessment of a development planning application. Recommendations arising out of such review are then taken on board and weighed by decision-makers in their final deliberations.

There is a direct and significant relationship between the development control process of a planning system and the achievement of design quality on the ground. Let us, therefore, take advantage of this opportunity to revise our planning system to shift the balance onto quality for the sake of our built environment and quality of life.

Antoine Zammit is an architect and urban designer.