Malta is increasingly becoming a nation of shopkeepers.
Policymakers’ obsession with growth at all costs drives unbridled investment in real estate and the opportunities it creates for profits.
What drives profit is the elasticity of demand. Market saturation leads to declining elasticity and necessitates creative destruction. In most cases, this destruction targets the environment and the quality of life of ordinary people.
The latest craze of property developers is to build commercial centres. These outlets are perceived as cash cows despite evidence that the retail market is becoming oversaturated with outlets, and despite the rapid growth in population in the last decade.
The owners of Gutenberg Press applied to turn its printing press building just off Tal-Barrani in Tarxien into a shopping complex, including a supermarket. This supermarket complex will lie just one kilometre from a Lidl supermarket and a stone’s throw away from Scott’s Supermarket. Does such overdevelopment make any sense?
The development consultants of this project wax lyrical about the need to “create a holistic experience for the family in the south of Malta”. They argue that developing such retail parks in areas already committed as containment areas will ensure that town centres are relieved from parking pressures and traffic congestion and will potentially lead to the re-organisation of town and village centres through improved pedestrianisation, landscaping and outside living.
A reality check of this mission statement reveals it is no more than wishful thinking. Our urban centres have long declined, not just because of the elimination of small retail outlets that used to be the hub of social life in our towns and villages. The destruction of traditional houses in our urban landscape has led to ugly modern structures of residential apartments and offices that jar with the historical environment.
Our cities no longer look or behave like the diverse meeting points of activities, but the somewhat over-rehearsed and calculated result of liberal urban development that promotes property development at all costs.
The Planning Authority is failing to set a blueprint for development that enhances people’s lives while encouraging sustainable growth. It is finding it increasingly difficult to coordinate large-scale investment with individual and societal expectations.
Growth is the measure that policymakers use to gauge success. We are told that the economy needs it. Confusingly, though, we also know that this is not what the planet needs. We are encouraged to consume more, often creating more demand for property development while restricting the options for the judicious use of our scarce land availability.
It is already becoming too late to redefine development policies that enhance people’s quality of life. Our economic strategies must be focused on promoting innovation rather than the kind of entrepreneurship that aims to exploit limited physical resources. We need policies that promote long-term sustainable growth through investment to enhance the skills of our human resources and productivity boosting technology rather than the quick growth of low-hanging fruit that property developers could pick.
Retail is a volatile business. It goes through changes and will continue to do so. We cannot rely on it to boost economic growth. Hopefully, the development of more supermarkets will not be financed by inexperienced bondholders or by the bank deposits of small savers.
We must hope for a more intelligent alliance between the planning policymakers, investors, and the retail industry rather than building more ghettos of shopping centres without paying attention to the larger issues that impact people’s lives.