A recent survey of Malta Development Association (MDA) members has found that “negativity” in the construction industry has been reversed since the new government took office, with efforts to minimise bureaucracy in issuing planning permits reinvigorating the development industry. Almost 75 per cent of MDA members declare they intend to invest in new projects.
Good news? Well, yes if you are a developer. But for the rest of the country, hugely concerned about the seemingly unstoppable construction development of the last 50 or 60 years eating further into the precious areas of remaining open countryside, this is a depressing harbinger of what the government has in store for this country.
The MDA’s chairman, Sandro Chetcuti, could not resist taking a side-swipe at environmental NGOs which, he said, “continue to instil fear,” underlining the survey’s findings that “environmental NGOs were considered to be an obstacle to development by MDA members”.
To call NGOs, who have been fighting unremittingly to save Malta from the uglification of the last half century, an obstacle is utterly to misread the history of Malta’s construction frenzy of recent years and the harm which all Maltese families can sense has been done to their quality of life by the construction industry.
The history of Malta’s environmental and spatial planning over the past 50 years has been a sorry story of greed, exploitation, abuse, misgovernance and political ineptitude. For the first 30 years, between 1962 and 1992, when the first Development Planning Act and the current Structure Plan were introduced, Malta had no planning laws to speak of.
Until 1992, Malta’s construction development was like something out of the Wild West with government ministers treating land as though it were a personal fiefdom. And the next 22 years since have also been rocky, with the totally unnecessary “rationalisation,” actually an expansion, of the building development zones in 2006 taking the prize for mismanagement of the environment.
MDA may well consider that the permissive approach being adopted by the Planning Authority is helpful to them – developers are in the business of making money through construction and property sales and care little for beautifying our country – but unless the government acknowledges as its start-point the rampant past over-development, and seeks explicitly to reverse or slow it down, it risks perpetuating the same mistakes.
The facts are that there is an over-supply of land for housing. Thousands of housing units lie empty. There is an over-supply of “floor-space” for the market services sector. Malta’s biodiversity continues to be threatened by development and over-exploitation. Malta’s built heritage is under threat from demolition, inappropriate design and use of new and restored buildings which undermine street character.
The cultural landscape is threatened by the extent of the built-up area, industrial and coastal development, taller buildings and urban fringes that obstruct views of historic centres, increased vehicular access, and poor standards of design and workmanship. The current situation is unsustainable.
This is the legacy of the MDA and the policies of successive Maltese governments. Unless there is a sudden outbreak of common sense, the policies of the planning authority, which the MDA survey so warmly welcomes, contain only the seeds for further destruction of Malta’s once unique architectural and heritage landscapes.