Eight years ago the Kamra tal-Periti, Malta’s chamber of architects, had issued an inspiring paper called ‘The Urban Challenge’. The architects wrote: “If we want the best for our successors, we cannot afford to be complacent. Neither can we afford quick-fix solutions or grand projects that have no relation to a wider overall context.”

They described the chamber as “a body of design professionals focused on the built environment sector. It therefore has a particular insight into the topic and a duty and responsibility to contribute to the urban debate”.

Their excellent paper identified priorities to create a better quality built environment, including transport, planning and heritage.

They quoted the well-known architect J. Quentin Hughes who in 1969 had said: “If Malta accepts laissez-faire development, the whole island will be obliterated by buildings. And this will take very little time. It will happen unless the planners, architects and the legislators take action very soon.”

A recent interview with the chamber in Malta Today came across quite differently. After first praising the idea of constructing massive high-rise buildings at Qui-si-Sana in Sliema, the chamber was asked about the potential infrastructural problems that this might create. The chairman replied that he “wouldn’t want to touch those with a barge-pole”.

Regarding the issue of 40,000 vacant buildings in Malta, the reply was that the supply-and-demand argument is for economists to tackle. Potential issues of wind-funnelling and shade created by high-rise must be solved by engineers. The ugly buildings we see everywhere are largely the fault of planning policies.

Unfortunately, admitted the chamber, there is a reactive attitude to planning problems in Malta. Problems are allowed to grow and then tackled later. Architects are designing “from the pavement inwards” and not looking beyond the building to the street.

If you were expecting the present chamber to offer a solution to this, think again. Apparently, they will go along with the reactive approach to urban problems. On concerns about infrastructure in Sliema, for example, their idea is that if we carry on building and allow the situation to become an even bigger problem, then maybe we will start thinking about how to solve it. The powers that be will eventually react. The chairman added the caveat that some people might think that this is a bit optimistic.

This laissez-faire attitude from Malta’s professional body of architects is not optimistic, it just seems mindless

For me, this approach is so off the wall that I don’t even want to think about it. What do they mean, that we should go ahead and intensify urban pressures until they cannot be ignored? Aren’t they bad enough already? This sounds like some whacky form of architectural brinkmanship.

With the current congested and unmanageable state of our roads and towns, with street after street of badly designed buildings, I regret to say that this laissez-faire attitude from Malta’s professional body of architects is not optimistic, it just seems mindless.

I don’t want to sound unfair as I know that there are plenty of architects who do care and think about creating a quality built environment. It is easy to misrepresent good efforts with a few skewed quotations and I certainly would not like to do that. However, if this is really the new vision of our young architects, we are truly heading up a creek without a paddle. After that interview, I think it would be helpful if the chamber were to make some effort to better explain their views, to ensure that they are heard properly.

I have been in the thick of ongoing discussions about the new Strategic Plan for the Environment and Development, as well as the new laws for the Mepa demerger, yet I have not heard anything being said by the chamber on these very important issues in recent months. The statement that the chamber “has the duty and responsibility to contribute to the urban debate” is not mine, but was made in their own position paper.

Following a meeting of the Parliamentary Committee for Planning and the Environment last week, the public has been granted four weeks, until early August, to put forward their views on the Mepa demerger Bills. That is all well and good, but for some inexplicable reason, the government is insisting that the documents are debated in the plenary session of Parliament immediately this week.

Despite repeated requests from the public, Environment Minister Leo Brincat and parliamentary secretary Michael Falzon adamantly refused to budge and continued to insist on holding the parliamentary debate now. The Opposition is refusing to participate in this debate until the consultation is concluded.

In effect, the government MPs will now persist in repeating a few platitudes to themselves in Parliament, presumably chanting the general mantra that they will strengthen the environment, with no added value whatsoever. No details of the proposed laws will be debated or challenged. I can assure you that there are plenty of contentious issues in these Bills which require a much closer look.

Your guess is as good as mine on why the government is refusing to wait until the consultation is concluded and hold a better informed debate. The parliamentary process will anyway not be over before the summer recess, so what is the problem with waiting until feedback from the public has been received?

petracdingli@gmail.com