As soon as the uproar about the new monti market stalls broke out, the buck was passed to the Minister for Small Enterprises for him to sweep up the debris. Chris Cardona was left holding the broom and dustpan while others scrambled over each other to get away from the mess.

The Prime Minister set up a committee and ordered a second set of new stalls, while Resources Minister Joe Mizzi slipped out quietly as he was only responsible for the street paving.

Let’s be clear about one thing. The pre-election agreement between Joseph Muscat and the market hawkers about moving their stalls to Ordnance Street is pure clientelism.

It is a case where the demands of individuals are acceded to in exchange for votes, and at the expense of the public good.

This agreement is not based on any policies or vision for Valletta, tourism or business, or on town planning. On the contrary, the Valletta local council, the Chamber of Architects and the hotel and restaurant sector have all reacted negatively. It is just dishing out personal benefits in exchange for political support.

The problem with clientelism is that things which work to get politicians elected might not work for the country. Rash promises can swing back like a boomerang.

This market, specialising in sunglasses, lighters and a range of underwear at bargain prices, was never at the city entrance and nobody wants it to move there except the hawkers themselves. You can’t blame them. They will get small cheap shops in a prime location at minimal rent.

The pre-election agreement between Joseph Muscat and the market hawkers about moving their stalls to Ordnance Street is pure clientelism

Amid this commotion, Culture Minister Owen Bonnici popped up to say that Valletta is Malta’s ‘Ferrari’ and should be treated as such. Well, putting the monti market at the new city entrance is like trying to run your Ferrari on water.

Other plans for Valletta are emerging. A debate was held in Parliament last week on transforming Strait Street into a ‘cultural and creative hub’ and a late-night entertainment area.

Valletta 2018 chairman Jason Micallef has ominously heralded this as a “new Paceville”.

Michael Falzon, Parliamentary Secretary for Planning, reasoned that late-night venues would prevent Valletta from becoming a museum. Ironically, a State-driven conversion of Strait Street into a cultural and creative hub, with its own artistic director, is actually quite like developing a museum or heritage site.

Regeneration projects are often inspired by heritage. The idea of late-night bars in Strait Street harks back to a romanticised vision of ‘The Gut’ when the harbour was full of naval officers.

I suppose Falzon might have been thinking of the dreary, old-fashioned museums some of us were taken to as children on school visits, dead boring, silent and dusty. I know what he means, although it does not really do justice to contemporary museums at all.

The derelict civil abattoir is to become a ‘design cluster’. This area, known as the Biċċerija, was earmarked by Renzo Piano as one of the ‘cultural nodes’ for the regeneration of Valletta in his first plan for the city over 25 years ago. We seem to have come round full circle.

Valletta has been overhauled these last 20 years, and it is great that this will continue in the run-up to the Valletta 2018 events. Boutique hotels are opening and the tourism and cultural aspects of the city are doing fine.

The big Valletta question today, if the aim is to avoid a museum-city, is how to revive it as a vibrant residential town.

One could start by asking why many families who had moved out during the bombings of World War II never really wanted to move back in, even after the destroyed houses were rebuilt.

Many Valletta houses were subdivided over the years, sometimes into awkward series of rooms with little light and no gardens.

The blocks of flats have no lifts and steep stairs to climb. Parking is always difficult.

Great properties are now being done up but often their new owners are either foreign, single, young or childless. Mostly not your average Maltese family with children.

Moving the monti market to Ordnance Street will not enhance Valletta as a residential area, a cultural space or a tourist destination. I honestly don’t know what the Prime Minister meant when he said that moving the stalls there will ‘instil life’ into Valletta.

How will these hawkers instil life into Valletta? They have already been in the city for ages. If their stalls had good atmosphere and interesting things for sale, Merchants Street would be packed with their customers.

People will go out of their way to visit a popular market. The commercial weakness of this market is its own product, not that it is in the wrong place. It needs to be revamped not relocated.

Especially now that the old covered market will finally be fixed up, I think that the open-air market should be next to it, leaving all markets concentrated in one area of Valletta. The market should stay in Merchants Street.

petracdingli@gmail.com

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