Paris, London, Venice, Madrid, Stockholm – great cities that are well planned, have grown over the centuries and remain places where people want to live. Quality of life, beautiful aesthetics, good traffic and people management, parks and open spaces to relax, restaurants, theatres and clean air. These are characteristics of cities that have been well planned. A strong planning process has adapted to the changing requirements of the citizens. Areas are zoned for high rise offices, as are suburbs for quieter living, shopping areas, offices and the seat of power and justice.

We look around our dusty, polluted towns and villages with roads blocked by cranes, choked with dust, drowned in noise and construction waste, filled with hazards, pavements broken by abuse, heavy trucks spewing black smoke. We cannot be surprised given that the planning function in this country has been abdicated by government and handed over to speculators and developers. For them, these past years have been the time of plenty.

However, for the rest of us, it has represented damage done to our quality of life, irreparable harm done to our streetscapes, to our health and to our countryside. Sustainability, planning, aesthetics are meaningless words brought out for conferences and articles, and as part of the electoral campaigns of our political parties.

Our Planning Authority’s stated vision “to make Malta and Gozo a more pleasant and desirable place to live in... acting on behalf of the community to provide a balanced and sustainable environment” simply sounds preposterous.

There is no easy fix for the planning process. It is almost always controversial, unfair and perhaps inadequate, as it tries to reconcile profit, conservation, protection and common good. In Malta, it has failed miserably with regards to the last three. This is not to say that the Planning Authority is intrinsically a useless organisation. Indeed, it has a huge treasure of skills in its staff and a repository of data accumulated over the years; it would fulfil its duty if there were the political will to allow it to do so.

Planning has been abused since the 1960s, when a growing population and increasing wealth, a desire for a higher standard of living coupled with industrialisation and tourism growth and the need of personal mobility offered by motor cars, increased the value of land immeasurably, and with it the pressure to develop.

We need planning clarity. Clarity about where you can build and how

The setting up of the Planning Authority, in the late ’80s, was intended to bring some semblance of order, with the Structure Plan rolled out in the early ’90s. Of course, it was a first attempt and it was flawed. However, it did try to zone areas for development, areas which were to be conserved while creating outside development areas, urban conservation areas, protected areas and introduced a proper scheduling process.

But politicians, responding to developer pressure, meddled with the laws, relaxed policies and plans, extended development areas, created loopholes or contradictory policies, as a result of which development won out. This put paid to any hope that Malta could remain a beautiful country.

Token areas, like Mdina and Valletta, and maybe Vittoriosa, were perhaps adequately protected, but the inexorable sprawl of ugly buildings and unplanned urban areas continued. Building heights were relaxed without a clear urban design logic. Development zoning was changed without due consideration and well-planned towns and villages were defaced. What we now have is a minestrone of styles, or non-styles, and speculators and small developers capitalising on the mish mash of regulations which are designed to allow almost any type of development. This produced the planning mess we have today, an environment irremediably ruined for generations.

The new prime minister can stop this. We need planning clarity. Clarity about where you can build and how. We need good governance where those tasked to look after our built and natural environment are not facilitators of their political or developer masters. We need to tackle the issue of aesthetics, where projects show regard to the surrounding environment and the context of the adjacent buildings. We need those who take planning decisions to show regard to our natural and historic heritage. What needs to be protected must be protected. These are difficult and weighty problems which are not easy to resolve. However, with people of integrity and the moral strength to resist political and other pressures, it can be resolved.

I would say that the reputational issues Malta has suffered abroad are easier to resolve than the damage suffered through speculation. This disease has taken root over the years. This is a scourge which has impacted our quality of life and we have accepted to live with it with hardly a whimper; indeed we seem to have embraced it as a way of life – if you need a permit, find a political fixer.

And while the common man must fight to open a window or to rectify some minor planning irregularity notwithstanding the validity of the objection, there are those who are able to drive a coach and horses for a major project through the regulatory processes, bending rules well beyond breaking point. If that does not work, the policies and regulations can always be changed for them. This is the pitiful state of planning today.

This must stop. Prime minister, we await to see, with bated breath, what direction your administration will take. Will the common good, which is to bring the country out of this morass and into some physical semblance of a first world country, prevail or will we remain in a state of byzantine dealings, favouring the few speculators – and a new built heritage which looks like some Middle Eastern country after a civil war?

Martin Galea is a council member of Din L-Art Ħelwa.