Historic cities everywhere are facing very similar problems. They can be as small as our Mdina with under 250 residents or as large as a million-plus city anywhere. Cities have requests for more retail space, for more offices. They have all kinds of problems with parking and traffic. They all face the onslaught of tourism numbers. These and other themes are being discussed at a major international meeting that will start today in Valletta. The CIVVIH Scientific Symposium is called The Historic City, A Reference Model for Urban Sustainable Development Policies.
CIVVIH is the International Committee of Historic Towns and Villages, one of the most important international scientific committees of the International Council of Monuments and Sites (CIVVIH). It is a network of the most important professionals in the field from all over the world. I am privileged to have been elected as its president three times .
This is the second major conference of ICOMOS in Malta in the past six months after the top officials were here last autumn and were all impressed with Malta. This conference too is being organised with the support of Heritage Malta, the Malta Tourism Authority and the Ministry for Finance.
The Scientific Symposium, open to the public at the Museum of Archaeology, will be inaugurated by the Prime Minister tomorrow at 9 a.m. The guest speaker is Dennis Rodwell, who has recently published a book titled Conservation and Sustainability in Historic Cities. His speech will be followed by various presentations from all over the world. In the afternoon there will be four specific workshops on seaport cities, wooden towns, mobility in cities and fortified cities.
Two important documents will be discussed during the meeting which will hopefully be the basis for a new Valletta Document that will replace the historic Washington Charter on Historic Towns.
Valletta, which has just embarked on an ambitious project to regenerate its entrance, is the ideal candidate for this meeting on historic towns. Over the past 20 years Valletta has seen tremendous improvements with its enlarged pedestrian area, controlled traffic and restoration projects.
It is also, however, a typical historic city facing an ever-larger decline in its population as its houses are taken over for banking, commerce and retail. Its own success at improving its environment means that it has become more and more attractive to the foreign buyer while the local population prefers to leave. It used to be the most important cultural, administrative but also residential city in Malta, but over the years this balance has been lost and it is not at all easy to maintain. But it will always remain The City for the Maltese.
As Prime Minister George Borg Olivier wrote in The Sunday Times in 1964: "At heart every Maltese is a citizen of Valletta." Let us hope our foreign guests will feel the same.