The recently-published Paceville master plan can be considered as a classic text book example of how a metropolis should be designed. It pulls together various regulatory bodies to ensure the right balances are struck between environment and development and between return on investment and quality of life. It looks at ways to ensure sustainability through utilities, waste management, traffic and parking. It takes into consideration access and spatial planning as well as function and aesthetics.

Still, one has yet to be convinced that it would work. Why?

The way in which it is presented makes the master plan look like some grown-up version of Minecraft, building a bit here and there until life is breathed into the whole thing… and everything then works like clockwork.

The problems are obvious: this is not a greenfield site but one that has already been ruined by lack of planning; in many cases rules or norms are observed in their breach and attempts to exercise control are often defied; and the brand has already been tarnished – quite possibly irreversibly – by sleaze, vice and violence.

Paceville has been invaded over the years by underage drinkers and naïve students unable to cope with the ability to drink non-stop, by foreigners from cultures with different values and by business visitors drifting out of their five-star hotels. Many operators rushed in to meet to all these demands and the result is utter confusion.

Also, controversies flared and then sputtered: overcrowded nightclubs, noise pollution, extra services in gentlemen’s clubs, overzealous bouncers and unclassifiable bottle shops. Somehow, this sordid reality has to be correlated with the artistic impressions of happy families, strolling with shopping bags in hand but not a single puddle of vomit, passed-out English-language student, blood stains or snarling pimp in sight. Is the latter any more of an exaggeration than the former?

In the documents pre-released, Paceville has been turned into a daytime mecca, with not one night-time picture to show where the lap dancers and bouncers have been hiding all day. Cars have been obliterated and delivery trucks magically made redundant. Tourists (and their luggage) are teleported in from the airport as no taxis have access to the hotels there and, yet, buses do not stack up to cater for busy bus stops, manoeuvring through badly-parked cars.

Also, the inconvenient reality seems to have been erased with all the ease of a video game. Whole blocks have been sacrificed to create open spaces. Indeed, more than 100 Paceville-based entrepreneurs met a Planning Directorate official to find out how the master plan will affect their businesses. They probably argue that the greater good has won out over their rights and one can argue forever whether they have already made enough money from the greed that reigns supreme there.

Another issue is that the beautiful boulevards, stippled with the shade from leafy trees, give no hint of the six or seven projects involving multiple high rises, which will bring thousands of workers and residents into the area, who will, hopefully, not all emerge for their lunchbreaks at the same time.

And where would the current users go? Would we solve this Paceville merely by driving them to a new place?

We all dream of well-planned towns, with good infrastructure, well-behaved people and aesthetic surroundings. But we also know what the problem is with making dreams come true…