I think it was in 1996 that someone first came up with the Connections project. It was about a link, by means of a sea-level tunnel beneath Valletta, between the Marsamxett and Grand harbours. At present, there are only two sea routes between the two. The first involves lugging boats overland from Pietà to Marsa, as the Turks did in the siege; the second navigating round the fairly treacherous St Elmo Point. Neither is tremendously practical.

In principle, Connections was a good idea. Which is why I was happy to read the other day that the project is back in the offing and has been green-lighted by Unesco. (I suppose that means that the tunnel will not undermine Valletta’s World Heritage status.) I was less happy to read that the man behind it is Angelo Xuereb.

But first, the good bit. The main value of the tunnel is that it would contribute in no small way to the rehabilitation of the harbour area as an integrated urban unit. Valletta and the old harbour towns grew around the sea as a connective element. Old photos show the water so choked with all manner of boats and ships, that you could almost do a Xerxes and jump along them across the harbour.

For reasons that had to do partly with broad historical changes and partly with a criminal lack of infrastructural planning, the butterfly turned into a caterpillar. The sea stopped being a connection and became an obstacle instead.

The Connections project is one of a raft of renovative innovations that have begun to reverse all of that. The others include the new Barrakka lift, the introduction of cheap and efficient ferry services across the harbours, and the footbridge across Galleys Creek that makes it possible to hop between Cospicua and Senglea.

The really good thing is that none of these innovations were intended as recrea­tional or touristic. Tourists use them all the time, of course, but the people who designed them clearly had basic functional infrastructure in mind.

For example, a return ferry ticket from Cottonera to Valletta costs  €2.80. That includes the use of the lift, and there are good-value season tickets and reductions for senior citizens. It’s the kind of pricing that we associate with daily commuting. The point is important and I shall be coming back to it.

A simple addition tells me that at least 63,000 people live in the towns that surround the harbours directly. The import of that number increases when we consider the social, rather than the purely demographic. The towns include Valletta and Sliema, whose social mass outweighs the 5,700 and 17,000 people who live there respectively. They also include Msida-Gżira and Marsa, both of which are connective nodal points.

The choice is between a city (and a harbour area generally) that functions as such, and a fossil that worships at the altar of heritage

It makes perfect sense to invest in and develop infrastructure – be it bridges, lifts or sea tunnels – that makes mobility within the harbour area easier, and less reliant on cars. And, if that integration is properly planned as a modular one, it would not result in a soulless mass.

When the Connections project was first mooted, it ran into some major objections from the usual suspects. It was said that the tunnel would deflower Valletta, destroy its subterranean wonders, weaken the foundations of historic buildings, and so on. An argument from heritage, in other words.

The work of Edward Said especially has taught me that a good chunk of the value of Valletta lies underground. I will certainly not rubbish arguments for its preservation. Still, the London Underground cuts across a buried legacy that goes back to the time of the Romans. Trains run rather happily tens of metres below ground in Rome, which is not exactly a history-less city. And so on.

The choice is between a city (and a harbour area generally) that functions as such, and a fossil that worships at the altar of heri­tage. There is nothing pretty about the heri­tagisation of places. There are few things I hate more than a sterile, formulaic and boring archipelago of heritage trails, interpretation centres and fridge magnets. It’s the very antithesis of a city.

On the one hand, and as far as possible, any intervention would do well to work around things and places of historic value. On the other, such caution should not kill the spirit of the city as a place where real people live and go about their daily business. Besides, Valletta is not a virgin and cannot therefore be deflowered. Rather, what we see today is the beautiful consequence of a thousand busy hands.

Which brings me to Xuereb. In this case, there is nothing the matter with him or his business in particular. What I do have a problem with is the idea that Connections should be a private commercial venture. There are at least two things that are wrong with this.

First, private enterprise will obviously go for the lucrative recreational and tourist markets. It is unlikely to think of mobility as a fundamental civic device, which goes against the spirit of the innovations I described earlier.

Second, the key argument here is that the tunnel is basic infrastructure. It is no different to a road or a sewage system. I was not charmed by the presence and smiles of the Mizzi ministers at the press conference. They were applauding Xuereb for doing something that was properly their duty to do. It’s astonishing that government seems to have all but given up on its responsibility to infrastructural innovation.

No amount of passports sold seems to be enough to fund a hole through 600 metres of soft rock.

mafalzon@hotmail.com

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