I remember walking along the Sliema promenade as a child and marvelling at the Preluna hotel. At 14 storeys, it was then the highest secular building in Malta and one that had progress and the future written all over it. Never mind that J.G. Ballard had written his eponymous novel years earlier, high-rise in those days stood for an El Dorado that was as desirable as it was elusive to the inhabitants of a country locked in a protectionist economy.
Little did we understand that the Preluna meant that Malta in general and Sliema in particular had already made their choices. When the time came, those desires and choices were quickly transformed into brick and mortar. The two-storey seafront terraces were the first to go, followed by the back streets as the town turned in on itself like a Gothic doorway.
Thirty years later, much of old Sliema has given way to a maze of apartment blocks and congested streets. The transformation has been especially striking in and around Tigné, where it was still possible well into the 1990s to squat in abandoned British buildings and hold rock concerts in open and largely empty spaces.
The problem is that even Gothic doorways run out of space at some point. In Sliema, it seems, the only way is up, and developers are falling over each other to propose, and in some cases build, tower blocks. Has the desire been fulfilled, then?
Not quite. Conrad Thake, Edward Said and Richard England are among a small bunch of architects whose work goes beyond rubber-stamping plans, turning countryside ruins into villas, and generally finding ways to outfox the planning regulations. Last week they joined forces to comment on the various high-rise projects that look set to further change and clog Sliema and Tigné.
Their drift was not exactly a merry one. High-rise, they said, was invading the town in a piecemeal and largely haphazard way. There was no holistic or strategic planning and the proposed tower blocks would create huge strains on the infrastructure and put a serious dent in the quality of life.
England’s main concern was that high-rise was unlikely to work unless it was embedded in a master plan that took into account the broader urban fabric.
Thake, whose field of expertise is 19th and 20th century architecture, lamented the way in which a soulless “glitz and glamour seen in countries in Asia and the Middle East” was being imported wholesale to replace swathes of good period buildings.
Said spoke about the impact of high-rise on the way of life of residents and visitors, among other things.
The point is that high-rise in Sliema is no longer the unequivocal symbol of progress it once was
This was not a matter of detached experts bloviating about things that the average person has no time for. At the general meeting of the Sliema local council held last week, a chorus of residents put pressure on the councillors to take legal action against the government on the matter of high-rise. As reported in the Times of Malta, the residents complained that Sliema, already unrecognisable, was about to become unlivable-in.
The point is that high-rise in Sliema is no longer the unequivocal symbol of progress it once was. Rather, an increasing number of people see it as a bane on the town.
And yet there is a contradiction. Even as people talk about the deterioration of Sliema, more and more of them want to live in it. Lemming biology aside, the fact is that new flats in Sliema are scooped up even before the grout in the bathrooms has time to dry. It follows that prices should match the astonishing demand.
Now this is fantastic news to developers. They are fond of reminding us that theirs is essentially a response to a market demand. I once heard Sandro Chetcuti of the Malta Developers Association say that developers did a great service to the nation by providing people with what they wanted most. In other words, the general drift of the MDA rhetoric is that developers are largely passive providers to an active public.
I’d be fooled, if it weren’t for my time in Mumbai. In a city where more than 12 million people are crammed into an area not quite twice that of Malta, the frenzy to build ever denser and higher blocks shows no signs of going away any time soon. There too, developers like to say that they are simply catering to the needs of the market.
Except the truth is rather different. It is clear even to a casual observer that much of the desire for a particular kind of real estate in Mumbai is, in fact, developer-driven.
The papers heave with adverts that promise heaven on earth in the form of gated tower blocks. Rather than respond passively to a market that already exists, developers actively and aggressively cultivate a market that has absolutely nothing to do with long-term planning and quality of life. The short-term gains are stacks of cash for the developers and a facile semblance of fulfilled desire for the buyers.
The resemblance with Sliema is uncanny. Forget the fantasy of philanthropic developers tending to people’s needs, the truth is that a whole industry exists that sells people dreams of a Manhattan lifestyle. (Thus the amusing real-estate jargon ‘lifestyle developments’). It’s the old Preluna symbolism, dragged into the 21st century.
We would be foolish to underestimate the power of the dream and of the people who peddle it. Rather like the torri of medieval Italian cities or the optimistically-priapic Trump Tower, high-rise in Sliema today is largely a monument to the vast power of the super-rich.
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