I went to Smart City for the first time two years ago on Boxing Day. I live practically round the corner, and it had also caught my eye from across the harbour in Valletta. What I saw made me resolve never to go there.

The only reason I ever did was a morning walk along the coast from Marsascala to Ricasoli. Smart City stood in the way, and I had no choice.

It was not yet eight, but scores of speakers were blaring White Christmas to a human audience of exactly one. The two ducks on the ‘lagoon’ were obviously thinking what a miserable, insipid, blow-up doll of a place they had found themselves in. I could tell, because I thought the same.

Smart City was born to be smart. Austin Gatt christened it “Malta’s bold step to her future”, among other things. Which was hot air even by his standards, because the place is just a bunch of hideous buildings that squat on the landscape not quite knowing what to do with themselves. Hardly futuristic icons, they look instead like bits of Lego left lying about the room by a child. Inspirational is the last thing you’d call them.

Problem is, they seem to be just that. Last Thursday, a mega-project was unveiled for the Institute of Tourism Studies site in St George’s Bay that will include a 319-room hotel, 209 flats, a conference centre and much more. The developers tell us that there will be two huge towers “pictured as a green waterfall”, a skyline that “mimics a flying bird”, and a Hard Rock hotel “as a hanging garden”.

The whole thing will be built by the same people who gave us the Seabank Hotel at Għadira. That legacy alone should have disqualified them outright, because the Seabank is one of the ugliest buildings in Malta and has thoroughly spoiled Għadira.

No matter, because the Prime Minister heaped praise on “is-Sur Debono” (Lord Seabank himself, that is) at the launch last Thursday. It turns out is-Sur Debono is looked up to by the Prime Minister as someone who delivers what he promises. Certainly he delivered a horror at Għadira, but that apparently is model behaviour.

His latest promise is a place that calls itself City Centre, in spite of the fact that it is neither in a city nor particularly central. The clue is in the name, because this new development is sunk in mimicry and lack of ideas. It is a master class of laundering and sleight that tries to pass off a stack of flats as a Brunelleschi centro storico.

Just as he did at Għadira, is-Sur Debono will proceed to squeeze as much money as possible out of a patch of land

The promotional video for City Centre tells us it will be “the most sophisticated place to go to in Malta”. Wrong, on two counts. First, I can think of quite a few places in Malta that are a tiny bit more sophisticated than a Seabank on steroids.

The oratory of St John’s Co-Cathedral, Sarria chapel, the streets of Valletta and Cottonera, the Hypogeum and a thousand other places all strike me as considerably more sophisticated than yet another hybrid between flats and a shopping mall. I consider the promotional video an insult – possibly one born of ignorance, but an insult nonetheless.

Second, there is nothing sophisticated about more of the same. City Centre is simply another in a list of clones that includes Portomaso, Smart City and Tigné.

I struggled to stay awake through the promotional babble: corporate conference centre, launching pad for global products, holographic shows, party promotions, exclusive spa and relaxation centre, tree-lined boulevard, leading hotel franchise, globally-known restaurants, drone, yawn, doze off.

Far from sophisticated, creative and a “new destination” (the Prime Minister’s description), City Centre is set to be another sterile non-place that looks and feels just like a million similar ones around the world – as the video itself says, “it could easily have been plucked from a Los Angeles boulevard”.

I’ve been to many of these places, in India and elsewhere, and they were consistently mind-numbing and unimaginative.

Just as he did at Għadira, is-Sur Debono will proceed to squeeze as much money as possible out of a patch of land.

It has been said that he made a very good deal and the taxpayer a very bad one. Sadly, I am not competent to comment on that. I do, however, know that his prize at present serves a perfectly agreeable purpose as a school.

Except no school can compete with a cathedral of greed.

A whole herd of cathedrals, in fact, because the projects lined up for St George’s Bay also include a new six-star hotel and resort, and the transformation of Villa Rosa into Godzilla.

If City Centre is in a city at all, it is a single-minded city obsessed with stars, franchises and resorts.

An urban planner’s nightmare, in other words.

mafalzon@hotmail.com