I can’t understand why our politicians and movers and shakers cannot appreciate the country for what it is, and are always saying that we are the next “X country” in the Med.
Alfred Sant wanted us to be Switzerland in the Med. Now 12 years down the line, Joseph Muscat wants us to be a Dubai/Singapore in the Med. He cites this as a necessary measure to halt urban sprawl – while not giving any guarantees as to halting urban expansion coupled with vertical sprawl.
The real reason for Muscat’s seductive mention of Singapore and Dubai is to hold out a promise of prosperity and cutting-edge modernity – never mind the fact the latter crashed economically and had to be bailed out and that it is built on the extremely retrograde slave labour. The Prime Minister assumes we will ignore this and be blinded by the bling of these high-rise metropolis.
But I can’t see why we should be made to stick the models chosen by the Prime Minister. If he insists on high-density, high-rise models, then why doesn’t he talk about Seoul? Seoul is the densest of the high-income world’s urban areas and once named as the ‘world design capital’ and the ‘city of the future’ – descriptions which would make Muscat salivate.
The problem (for us) is that the Seoul model of urbanisation is an awful place for people, especially families. According to a recent OECD study, Korea is one of the unhappiest places on earth. Seoul is highly congested and aesthetically barren, resulting in a dehumanised environment.
Why should the little people be the only ones making Malta great?
The once proud ‘city of the future’ has now attracted public opprobrium and opposition. Seoul’s city government has had to suspend a ‘new towns’ proposal that sought to knock down the city’s last remaining low-density areas. Koreans have been rejecting the hyper-dense core of Seoul, which has lost nearly one million residents (10 per cent) in 20 years, with residents and migrants from elsewhere in the country heading for the relatively less dense suburbs.
How are we to avoid a similar predicament if we are forced to bow down to the ‘Seoul in the Med’ model?
• The ‘Making Malta Great’ campaign is making me mad. I know it’s just one of your run-of-the mill internal branding campaigns to get us pumping with civic pride and whatnot, but still it’s intensely irritating for many reasons.
The first is that we’ve been here before. Oh yes. Another time, another administration, but we’ve definitely been here before with ‘Brand Malta’. That was a very similar branding campaign where Maltese citizens and service providers were encouraged to identify and ‘own’ the country’s brand promise or values, so they could transmit them to visitors. The people who are engaged to do these sort of things had concluded that hospitality, warmth and service were our unique selling points. They set about turning the Maltese into brand ambassadors for the country.
And it was a spectacular failure. Not because the Maltese are not welcoming and hospitable – or because they wanted to sabotage the branding exercise. It simply boiled down to the fact that people couldn’t get themselves to promote a totally inaccurate image of a country that they no longer recognised from the tourism brochures.
There was a reluctance to go about promoting the country as a centre of excellence when it clearly wasn’t. How could anybody wax lyrical about lovely towns, quaint villages, azure waters and jolly trips to all of these, when they were navigating through construction sites, breeze blocks and sludgy seas?
As for service – well, we all know what service is like in many establishments and public authorities. How can we keep a straight face when extolling the high standards of service of establishments whose mantra is ‘Take it or leave it’?
The message that we are being told to convey does not resonate with the reality we experience. That’s why this internal branding always fails in Malta – because we are enjoined to jig about as happy inhabitants of a picturesque Mediterranean island living our version of la dolce vita in this amazing mix of modernity and tradition, when we realise that the country is overtly built-up, dirty and traffic congested.
Another annoying aspect of the ‘Making Malta Great’ campaign is this preachiness about picking up litter and being civil and helpful.
Now I am all for individual effort and doing one’s bit and I readily accept that if I’m not part of the solution, I am part of the problem. So I will carry on with my non-littering stance and save the drop effort. But I bristle to see so many children turning off their taps while brushing their teeth and diligently throwing away their crisps packets and being eco-friendly while the big offenders get away unscathed.
Why not direct civic awareness campaigns at private industries? Why not get restaurants and catering establishments to do something about the waste they generate? Why don’t we ask the Maltese bottling industries sucking our boreholes dry to ‘Catch the gallons’? Why not get noise-polluting establishments to tone it down a notch?
Why should the little people be the only ones making Malta great? Maybe the marketing moollah should be directed in this direction, instead of pestering the rest of us.
cl.bon@nextgen.net.mt