Malta’s urban landscape increasingly resembles the ancient biblical city of Babylon. This time, however, there is no biblical ambition “to build a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves”.
Today’s ‘pencil towers’ populating our towns communicate only a desire to squeeze as much money as possible from a single plot of land. Pencil towers rise up over our cities, eclipsing our rich history and what remains out of our beautiful old buildings.
The outstanding application with the Planning Authority (PA) to demolish a little townhouse, the last remaining on Tower Road in Sliema, sandwiched between two enormous blocks to build a 10-floor apartment block no longer surprises most people. Just further down the road, two pencil buildings are expected to rise within metres of each other on The Strand to make way for two (more) hotels, signalling the obliteration of the sun and views for hundreds of residents.
Many have given up hope that our planning regulators will ever stop the madness and greed of developers from ruining the little that remains of our urban environment.
Pencil towers rise to a height totally incommensurate with the tiny ground footprints they occupy. They are not only the product of advances in construction technology – and an increase of super-rich buyers – but a liberal planning and zoning policy that allows a developer to acquire unbuilt spaces or traditional residential property to erect a vast structure without any effective public review process taking place.
Last year, the Court of Appeal overturned a decision of the PA to allow a terraced house in a row of terraced houses in Santa Luċija to be demolished and turned into apartments.
The presiding judge ruled that because the local development plan’s height limitation permitted buildings of the height applied for, it did not mean the permit should be granted.
This judgment was expected to have “fundamental repercussions” on how the PA granted development permits. Of course, it did not.
A heady confluence of engineering prowess, zoning loopholes and unparallel concentration of personal wealth in the hands of a small elite have spawned a new species of tall, super-skinny, super-expensive spires.
Today’s towers are statements of soulless aesthetic visions enabled by pushing planning laws to their limit.
Our planning regulators believe that where there is money and will to build tall, a way will be found, however much it may be to the detriment of residents who are deprived of their right to live in a healthy urban environment.
The sight of ugly, uncoordinated, bloated glass stalagmites reaching up to nothing but vain glory, facing nothing but each other, feels dystopian. Still, our politicians have no clear policy on how they will stop this onslaught to save what little is left of it.
The aesthetic revulsion of many worried citizens is equalled by their fear that political leaders have lost touch with the aspirations and fears of ordinary people. The whole process of granting development permits is overdue for reform. We need to define stricter skyline preservation criteria. We must give more importance to the shadow impacts of new development.
We need limits on how much of a town or city’s air a developer can buy. We need to talk about how much luxury housing we think is appropriate when we are in an affordable housing crisis.
The PA must make the public review process more effective to ensure that all stakeholders’ voices are heard. Today, there is zero effective consultation, even if the planning regulators will strongly deny this as they keep burying their heads in the sand.