With the eight-week public consultation on the Pace-ville master plan near its end, the Planning Authority has only now deemed it appropriate to face the residents it is proposing to render homeless.

This is a pitiful attempt to tick another box on the checklist in the hope of silencing its critics.

Public consultation should be treated as a basic planning principle and form part of the roots of any plan, especially one proposing to restructure a whole community.

More fundamentally, it is in Maltese law enacted through the Aarhus Convention, where it is specifically stated that not only should consultation take place but it must at the very early stages of planning. What good is holding these one-to-one meetings now, when the proposal is already at such a formulated stage?

Any suggestions given at this point will result in nothing more than shallow amendments peppered into the plan, resulting in no real change. 

All agree that a master plan is needed, but this cannot be it

In order for this consultation to be of any value, the PA will have to scrap the plan and start the whole process again, setting off with the aspirations of the whole nation and not the handful of developers who seem to be the only ones set to gain anything from this proposal. Just consider the huge increase in prime real estate that this plan is proposing for certain  developers.

Through this master plan, the Planning Authority is creating 480,000 square metres of prime real estate by allowing the so-called ‘baseline sites’ to develop far higher and in excess of that which the present local plans allow. This government-funded revision is literally giving developers an estimated €1.4 billion worth of real estate over and above that which they could build today.

Why is such property inten-sification being proposed in Paceville? We haven’t even confirmed whether the island can accommodate a few high-rise towers, let alone actually know how economically viable it would be to suddenly give the go-ahead for an additional 24.

As the Chamber of Architects put it, worryingly: “The volumes and population density by the framework have all the makings of a potential development bubble.”

Again, why Paceville? Why not Marsa or Buġibba? Why not spread the benefits of tourism equitably? Why spend €585 million of public funds for infrastructural upgrades in an area of less than one square kilometre when so many regions of the island are crying out for regeneration?

All agree that a master plan is needed, but this cannot be it.  For a start, the people it is affecting must be consulted before the plan is drafted. Any proposal must be based on comprehensive studies that do not treat Paceville as an isolated location, but assess the social, economic and environmental impact of the surrounding areas and the island as a whole.  

We need to address the island’s true carrying capacity before proposing such phenomenal urban intensification. Our land is too scarce and roads too congested to afford the luxury of building today and thinking tomorrow.

If you would like the Planning Authority to know your views on this master plan, send your feedback to http://new.faa.org.mt/do-your-bit/submit-proposals-paceville-masterplan/ .

Tara Cassar is a Flimkien għal Ambjent Aħjar environment officer and architect.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.