The Marks & Spencer Valletta outlet has glass flooring, which means that whenever I’m in their household section, I have to slink against the walls, or else balance on the iron beams like I’m walking on a tightrope, until I can hop on to a part with concrete flooring. As you may have gathered, heights are not my forte.

So all this skyscraper-a-day every time I open the newspaper is most definitely giving me the vertigo. If my maths is right, this week I’ve counted 12 proposals for high-rise buildings, all concentrated in the Pembroke-Sliema area, with the highest reaching 44 floors.

What is this sudden fascination with skyscrapers? When I was little, after watching Spiderman dangling from one tower to the next in New York, I asked my father why was it that in Malta we didn’t have any of those superstructures. He got a one cent coin (in those days it was a large copper one) and told me: “Imagine this coin is tiny Malta.” Then he put a tall pencil on top of the coin, and said: “This is how a skyscraper would look here.” It looked ridiculously top-heavy, and from that day on I never hankered for any of this high-pile business.

Of course, the towers proposed for Sliema look Lilliputian by global standards. Even the 44-storey one is a tiddler compared to the current world-record holder, the 163-floored Burj Khalifa in Dubai, which stands at a height of almost one long kilometre.

For comparisons sake, the Empire State Building in Manhattan has 102 floors and the building of that ludicrous wannabe US president, Trump Tower, is 78 floors.

In Europe, only Moscow’s 264-metre Triumph Tower makes it to the world’s top 100 highest buildings. Luckily, Europeans are not big on chavvy buildings that are in essence nothing but spiky, ‘look-at-me’ phalluses.

A case in point is The Pentominium, one of the works-in-progress 516-metre buildings in Dubai, which when ready will have interior fittings made exclusively by Davidoff, Swarovski and Tiffany & Co and all loads of other glitz and blitz.

In Europe, size and glitter is not all: instead what makes a building prestigious are location and architecture. Look at the majesty of St Paul’s Cathedral in London, no wonder James Wright, the 17th-century poet wrote: “Without, within, below, above, the eye is filled with unrestrained delight.”

However, in the Middle East and the Far East – vide Tokyo’s Skytree and China’s Shangai Tower – they see towers as symbols of their nouveau affluence and influence.

I have this disconsolate feeling that we are being egged on by this ‘mine-is-bigger’ syndrome. Already there cannot be any beauty in anything created for such a purpose, but to make matters worse, our sense of architectural aesthetics – when it comes to high-rises – is not grand. I mean, look at Portomaso and the beyond-ugly A3 Towers in Paola. They make my eyes fill with unrestrained tears.

Dare we hope for tall buildings beautifully designed in harmony with our surroundings? Will they just be another mediocre blob of concrete?

Not only that, if all goes as predicted, within a few years, the sun will be gone from Sliema and St Julian’s. There will be a perennial shade, in the shape of looming towers.

Dare we hope for tall buildings beautifully designed in harmony with our surroundings? Will they just be another mediocre blob of concrete? Will the projects be taking into consideration the public surroundings and the street-level experience? Will there be an assessment of the impact on the area community, on traffic and on infrastructure? Will something as basic as drainage withstand the increase in usage? Because let’s face it, it’s pointless living in a luxury flat (call it apartment if it makes you feel better) and everytime you go to the loo you have to call your butler to run along with a plunger to push down any little gift that you left in the toilet bowl.

The bottom line is that we cannot have profound changes made to our skyline with little debate or be constantly given that standard reply of “we cannot stand in the way of investment”. This is Malta’s skyline we’re talking about. Once altered, it will change forever and with it, Malta’s future profile.

I have a feeling that the ideas of skyscrapers are being sold by the minute. I’m sure that at this very moment there is someone wearing an expensive suit, convincing a Maltese chap by saying things like:

“Imagine turning the corner of Bisazza Street and seeing something that shoots up into the heavens… just like a beanstalk made of steel!”

“Eh! Lots of tourists go to New York mainly to see the skyscrapers! Tall buildings are good for the country’s international image!”

And, last but not least:

“Skyscrapers help the country to compete with other cities in more serious ways.”

That clinches it. Mention “din serjeta’” and you have us all ears. We always want to show our solidarjeta’ with serjeta’.

I recently came across the term weltschmerz, which means world-weariness – an anxiety caused by looking around you and seeing an excessive indulging in affluent malaise. I think that is exactly how I feel. In between one sigh and the other, I wonder what do we think we’ll find when we build beyond the sky. I cannot but think of one of my favourite poets, Dorothy Frances Gurney. “One is nearer God’s heart in a garden than anywhere else on earth,” she says. “Under the olive trees… the soul of the world found ease.”

Why can’t we have it so simple?

krischetcuti@gmail.com
Twitter: @KrisChetcuti