One of the classic dichotomies of all times is that ‘man made the town whereas God made the country’. It may involve a bit of stretching because a lot of divine inspiration may be evident in the towns while the country as it has come down to us, with its field walls and terracing, its tracks, its valleys and watercourses, its trees and variegated crops, testifies to the secular selective labour of man.
For centuries and millennia man built his temples and his abodes more or less as he thought fit and cultivated the land that was most fertile and convenient.
As building densities rose other considerations, such as defence and accessibility, transport and increasingly marginal agriculture came to the fore and matters had to be more and more regulated in the overall interest of the community.
With the industrial revolution we get the overnight explosion of the towns – the conurbations – and the practical desertion of the countryside. The traditional balance was therefore upset and it took a very long time to restore a certain order.
We cannot afford to turn down an economically good opportunity just on principle
World War II, with the large scale destruction that it brought about, provided the ideal opportunity for a fresh start, the green belts and what the Beveridge Report had called “homes for heroes”.
In Malta, we had more than our fair share of destruction and our reconstruction was more or less based on Harrison and Hubbard’s ‘Valletta and the Three Cities’. The War Damage and Reconstruction funds were quickly exhausted and the current legislation was inadequate.
Nevertheless, we had a building boom in the 1960s and then the government passed a watered down version of the British Town and Country Planning Act of 1947 for which no ‘day’ was appointed.
By that time, Britain had switched over to the freer ‘structure planning’ (planning with a broad brush) as advised by PAG, the Planning Advisory Group, alias ‘Planning Appeals Galore!’
Eventually, we too had our Structure Plan for the Maltese Islands in 1990, approved by Parliament in 1992.
Under all systems there was a clear-cut distinction between ‘town planning’ proper for the zoned towns and villages (some 30 per cent of the total area) and ‘country planning’, largely of the prescriptive type, for the areas situated outside the development zones (about 70 per cent of the total area).
The latter comprises the agricultural land and buildings, parks, quarries, workyards, waste deposits, large establishments too big to fit in the development zones and reserve land for any good economic opportunities that might arise – I used to mention a Walt Disney theme park!
We have to be choosey because we do not have too much land. On the other hand we cannot afford to turn down an economically good opportunity just on principle.
The buzzword ODZ has recently crept in. It started as a joke in 1990 based on the initials of the minister’s secretary and is not found as a technical term in any town planning text. We now even have an ODZ front!
By all means, let us make the best of the land which we have in reserve, however, we cannot afford to be too negative.
André Zammit lectured in urban studies at the University of Malta and was involved in the setting up of the planning authority.