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Angelo Xuereb is managing director AX Holdings
Yes, I agree that after a lapse of around 15 years and in the absence of approval of most of the Local Plans, the building zones had to be reconsidered and increased where it was felt necessary to fill in the existing voids and gaps within the existing schemes or to realign the irregular development boundaries.
Apart from helping to create an improved urban fabric, interesting streetscapes and regular street networks, this expansion will help to balance off the demand and supply of developable property. This, in return will help reduce the pressure on property prices, which are ever increasing.
I have not gone through all these additions, but from what I understand, these additional parcels of land are relatively small and are located on the periphery of the existing development zones. If one has to look at the existing development zone, one will realise that in certain zones, the development boundary lines are very irregularly defined and smoothing out this peripheral boundary seems to be the most logical solution.
The main reason for this irregular planning is the result of a Structure Plan, which when drawn up back in 1990, was based on the premise, that there was enough undeveloped land within the schemes which could sustain the demand for the following 20 years. Now that more than 15 years have passed, most of these parcels of land have been developed while others remained vacant for other reasons, either due to inheritance or legal problems.
The experience we all gained since the issue of the Structure Plan should help us project a better sustainable development in the future. In my opinion, MEPA should put more emphasis on designing energy efficient buildings and more importance should be given to the design of each individual project as part of the whole streetscape.
Because of our land limitations and because of the land use pressure, higher rise development should seriously be considered. Higher rise buildings developed on a plot ratio basis, having all rooms with direct sunlight and more open spaces between each block offer better planning solutions. Furthermore, we can create pedestrianization areas surrounded with attractive landscaping. Other aspects such as microclimate and social factors should also be assessed.
I do believe that the move towards a modest expansion of the development zone is a decision in the right direction, but let us hope that we have learnt from the past mistakes. Let us create a better living environment by planning a more sustainable development which encompasses a balance between development, land use, environment and social needs.
Martin Galea de Giovanni is a member of Friends of the Earth
FoE (Malta) are very concerned about this process of 'rationalisation' of development boundaries, not least because the term rationalisation effectively means an enlargement of the development zone by 2.4%. It is ironic that notification of this 'rationalisation' exercise comes a couple of weeks after a national conference on sustainable development organised by the Environment Ministry, where the issues of land use and over-development, as well as the environmental damage from the construction industry were the most discussed subjects. Clearly, sustainability is only a buzz word amongst our politicians.
Environment Minister George Pullicino acknowledges the fact that the zones within the existing development schemes already provide enough land for development for the country's future needs. Which answers your question as to whether there is any justification for increasing the land for development.
According to Minister Pullicino, the rationalisation process is meant to address anomalies and injustices created when the Temporary Provision Schemes were hurriedly drawn up in 1988.
However, FoE believes that this rationalisation process will (1) fail to address the injustices, and moreover, create more injustices and (2) set a precedent for subsequent Ministers/Governments to introduce or modify the criteria, leading to ever more land being given up for development.
To give one example, during a consultation meeting held between the Environment Ministry and representatives from the environmental NGOs, Minister Pullicino said that only applications from owners of plots of land who had submitted a request for their land to be included in the development scheme will be considered in the rationalisation process. Anybody who had missed on the opportunity of submitting a request (when there was no specific need to do so) has now lost the boat.
Asked whether there had been a call for these owners to submit a request at any stage, we were told that there had been a public consultation process and anybody who had an interest should have participated and submitted a request. Failing to do so is automatically understood by the Ministry to mean that the owners have no interest in developing the land. In a country where owning a field on one side of the development boundary instead of the other makes an incomparable difference in its value, it is hard to fathom whether there exists anybody in this country who would miss out of the opportunity of getting the land inside the development zone. This apart from the fact that the 90% of landowners who will not benefit from this rationalisation scheme will consider this process as yet another injustice and will now be piling up the pressure on this government (or a potential Labour government) to extend the scheme boundaries, or modify the selection criteria so that their land will also be included. All this regardless of the fact that our politicians admit that we already have enough land given up for development to meet our current and future needs, and that more than 40,000 dwellings are unoccupied, and that Malta has less than 50 years of building stone left at the current rate of construction, and the fact that all this needless development is destroying our tourism potential and affecting public health.
We do not believe that this rationalisation process is in the public interest. If rationalisation is the objective of this exercise, one would have expected government to remove an equivalent footprint of land of high scenic and ecological value from the development zones.
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