In the report entitled Figures Show Malta Most Built-up Country In EU (October 26), Astrid Vella was more than justified in making the statements “more worrying than the statistics is the impact” and “overdevelopment is scientifically proven to have a detrimental effect on the physical and mental health of town-dwellers”. Clearly so! The evidence stares us in the face.
Comparing Malta’s demographic state with that of other countries has little meaning because of differing parameters. Sweden, with a land mass similar to Spain’s, has large tracts of tundra, for example. The Swedes cherish these in both the culture and at law as “untouchable heritage”.
That is the kind of mindset we Maltese must fix for ourselves. Leaving things for NGOs to worry about is not enough (however much we may admire their most valuable efforts) in view of the authorities’ lack of consultation with the concerned public or other demonstrated intransigence.
As things stand we are simply increasing the risk of falling into the abyss of ignominy. There still lingers the mentality that claims, with astounding glib, that “developers always build to satisfy demand” or “they do not develop just for their own enjoyment to build”, to quote claims by the head of an industrial association.
The Maltese have no wish to (further) prostitute their homeland
How vacuous and patronising are those notions! Do we have to remind ourselves that developers build for no other reason than to make money? Demand has little to do with it; it is simply a matter of opportunism.
Edward Lear invented archipelagone and archipelawent; he may have been inspired by déjà vu after marvelling at the vistas of Għar Dalam, Ta’ Ċenċ and Fomm ir-Riħ in the winter of 1866.
It is common knowledge that Malta has an inordinately over-size built footprint. This fact is almost comical were it not for the dire implications of its negative consequences. Rather than pander to sensationalism journalists could use their energies more usefully by providing worthy information, so as to promote reasoned public opinion even if it is to express dismay at our apparent inability to enforce regulation or re-think workable and effective reforms in whichever situations can be seen to accelerate the degeneration of a reasonably acceptable quality of life.
A non-Maltese who has vested interest in the Xemxija ridge project is reported in this newspaper (November 1) as saying in its defence that he thinks it will be an “attraction to investors”. No doubt this visionary is accurate there!
Why didn’t the correspondent ask him what he thinks about the fact that the Maltese have no wish to (further) prostitute their homeland (as had happened as a result of the fracas of Mepa’s lost credibility arising from misinformation used to ‘justify’ various outline permits)?
As with public transport, itself still an unsolved problem no less desperate than the subject in caption, the difficulties cannot be resolved if entities are permitted to have their way when their only objective is to make money. That corporate style is a thing of the past with increasing awareness of the finiteness of material resources.
Project management is, like everything else, a changing art. Proposals need to be justified in terms of how they positively contribute to the environment or improved quality of life. Perhaps in Malta the time has come for viability (in that sense first, in the financial aspect second) to be built into a cost structure, not the other way round. In other words, there might be a need to revive an industry which, although not returning true commercial profit, might still be deemed to be worth retaining because it services a (national) need; this so long as it can return a margin above the discounted value of capital employed (or deployed, if it cannot be subsidised from other sources); a kind of life-quality loss-leader, as it were.
With the resource close to exhaustion, re-rendering building stone (from demolished structures) is a good example. Catching rainwater is another; the large savings in the cost of ‘polishing’ brackish water to potable quality, as compared with the cost of desalinating seawater, could significantly off-set the cost of building an infrastructure of reservoirs and piping.
It is right to do what may be acceptable to promote survival of the building industry, but it is vital not to add any new built-up footprints. Ways forward lie in diversifying into barely-tapped related areas, such as restoration, re-rendering (recycling), re-building structurally unsound edifices (for social housing?), clearing and rehabilitating illegal structures and their footprints.
There is State property that could be re-assigned to alternative use (the Auberge de Bavière could have made a perfectly good parliament building, with sizeable parking space inside and outside its quadrangle and plenty of fresh sea air to soothe furrowing brows).
If we are incapable of using building waste to fill spent quarries, for example (and reclaim arable land thereby) then we deserve whatever we get.
If authority rides roughshod over the warning cited in this newspaper’s editorial (November 4) what we will get is a Malta that will be an increasingly less-than-pleasant place in which to live. Nobody wants that, surely!