When one lands at the Sliema Ferries from a Captain Morgan yacht, one is struck by the ugly development and townscape one is greeted with.

In recent years, there seems to have been no planning, or even bad planning, of this heart area of Sliema. It is now characterised by high buildings of no recognisable plan. And the same holds for much of the Sliema seafront, of St Julian’s and even now of Swieqi.

The bad planning in these areas is nothing less than disastrous.

The much-maligned Knights of St John adopted strict norms for planning their towns and cities and their individual buildings. So did the British in planning their forts and orderly towns and White Rocks officers’ apartments.

Over the last 20 years, Malta’s town planning, townscapes and building heights have become a hotchpotch and a free for all. Little harmonious planning is evident and very often it is even bad planning, rendering our island’s townscapes excessively crowded. disjointed and overpopulated.

People who don’t care about our townscapes are ruling the roost, with the resultant hideous effect on our natural and built environments. We are backsliding badly and dangerously.

Valletta may be a European Capital of Culture but the rest of Malta is a heavily-damaged environment of unharmonious townscapes.

The solution lies in seeking and pursuing more order, discipline and harmony in our town planning, with strict rules being enforced on any new development. We must follow the strict rules followed by the Knights and the British. Otherwise, we would have made bad use of our islands’ vaunted independence.

Political independence is one thing.

Environmental independence is quite another, which we have to adopt again if we care at all about our islands.