Everyone but government, it seems, is finally waking up to the development problem…

The other day I happened to drive through Mosta on my way to somewhere else; and while I’m not sure if it’s a temporary arrangement, on account of the latest road-widening project in the area… it seems that the flow of traffic has recently gone back to how it used to be in the good old days.

In other words: I found myself approaching Mosta Dome directly through Eucharistic Congress Avenue, instead of taking the longer way around. And apart from being a much more sensible route into that particular town anyway (akin to entering a house by the front door, instead of climbing through the back window)… the experience also forcefully jogged a distant memory – dating back 40 years or more – of being driven through the same street, in the same direction: only this time, with the purpose of buying a bicycle.

Naturally, I won’t bore you with the plethora of other emotions that single memory also evoked: let’s just say it was my ‘first bicycle’… even if it was actually meant to be shared with my older brother (which was probably just as well; for I quickly discovered that bicycles were not really my thing, after all… in fact, I never even learnt to ride the darn thing in the end…)

Nonetheless, there is a reason why one’s ‘first bicycle’ is officially regarded as an important rite of passage in any child’s life. Very often, it will also be that child’s first taste of ownership and responsibility; the first intimation of true freedom and independence; and in many cases, also an instant ticket to social acceptance, by other children who already own bicycles of their own…

And granted: in terms of sheer coolness, the Raleigh-14 we bought that day was clearly no match for the Grifters and BMX’s owned by other kids in the neighbourhood. But still: it was MY (sorry, OUR) Raleigh-14… and more significantly: we owned it at a time when kids could still ride bicycles safely in the street, without permanent fear of death or incapacitation…

In any case: that single memory, on its own, was already enough to elevate my mood slightly. And the same feeling of elation only multiplied exponentially, when I drove past where the old bicycle shop used to be; only to realise that… well, who would ever have guessed? It’s still there.

Or at least: the original shop sign still hangs above the (shuttered) door; as for the shop itself, a much-enlarged version seems to have been relocated onto the other side of the same street … and meanwhile, I am told that a second branch has opened in L-Iklin…

But the point of this nostalgic (and probably unnecessary) preamble is not to underscore the historical resilience of certain centennial Maltese family businesses; but rather, to… how can I put it? Even though the illusion itself was all-too quickly shattered, just by proceeding to drive through other parts of Malta… for a tiny moment there, that simple change of traffic flow felt almost like a reversal of the entire space-time continuum.

Not only was I approaching Mosta Dome from the opposite direction; but the sensation was uncannily similar to driving backwards through time (and let’s face it: it helps that Eucharistic Congress Avenue itself has changed so very little, in the hundred or so years it has existed).

For some reason, I drove off feeling vaguely… gratified, for want of a better word. It somehow ‘felt good’, to be reminded – even if in such a fleeting, illusory way – that there are certain little corners of an older, less utterly ruined Malta, that have actually survived the recent overdevelopment onslaught (even if you sometimes have to distort your own perception to actually see them).

And if nothing else, that thought alone suggests that there might still be a point in trying to save what little is left of our islands’ built-or-unbuilt heritage… or at least, to prevent as much further damage as can realistically be prevented in future.

But if I bring all this up today, it is also because I am detecting – unlike any other previous time I can remember – the beginnings of a major, groundswell movement in much the same direction. It could, of course, be every bit as illusory of the ‘Mosta time-warp factor’ I’ve just described; but today, more than ever before, there seems to be mounting evidence of national frustration (if not downright anger) at what can only be described as a woefully untenable, tragically unsustainable situation, which seems to have no end in sight.

You can feel it in the prevalence of unabashedly nostalgic ‘Lost Malta’ pages, that now flood the social media; you can sense it in the constant emergence of new anti-development NGOs… as well as the fact that established civil society groups have undeniably upped the tempo: occasionally extending their activism to physically blocking construction from actually taking place (a case in point being Moviment Graffitti’s recent protest against the Fortina jetty at Balluta).

Heck, you can even inhale it directly through your nostrils, in the form of particulate construction dust… there is, in fact, no escaping the side-effects of our unstoppable ‘political-industrial construction complex’. (No, not even by watching foreign TV. The extent of Malta’s environmental degradation is now even the subject of French documentaries…)

Above all, you can also detect it in certain recent political changes: especially at local government level… and so far, with a specific emphasis on Gozo (unsurprisingly, the main battlefield in this particular war).

To the best of my knowledge, it was absolutely unprecedented that all 17 of Gozo’s local councils – with all their divergences of opinion (and I’m not just talking politics here) – would get together to form a common, unified front on this issue: unanimously complaining about the alarming rate of urban and rural destruction of their island… and urging government to ‘do something about it: FAST’.

And there are other examples, too. Personally, I don’t begrudge President George Vella for suddenly waking up to this same problem… but only when it happened to affect the Zejtun street he himself grew up in as a child. It is, after all a bit like my own ‘first bicycle’ experience: sometimes, it takes the emotional spark of a childhood memory, to trigger the deserved practical response…

So even if his epiphany came a little late in the day: President Vella now has to be accounted among the many who are at least trying, in their own way, to ‘do something’ about a situation that the government persists in ignoring altogether. And one the first things he did was organise a National ‘State of the Nation’ Conference… in which I can’t help but note that the emphasis, so far, has been almost entirely on this one issue alone.

Meanwhile: for much the same reason, I won’t climb onto the bandwagon which is currently gawping at Tonio Fenech’s contribution to that conference last Friday: when the former Finance Minister finally admitted that his government had been WRONG to expand the development boundaries in 2005/6 (i.e., a good 14 years after practically every sane voice on the island had told him pretty much the exact same thing, directly to his face…)

And OK: admittedly, Fenech’s sudden shift in perspective may have had less to do with random childhood memories… than with the simple fact that the Nationalist Party is itself no longer in government; and can therefore no longer actually do anything about a situation it now finds so easy to complain about…

In fact, it just never ceases to amaze me how former ministers always somehow manage to ‘see their error of their ways’… but only ever at a point when it is the ‘other party’ that is responsible for precisely the same old, catastrophic policies that they themselves had championed in the past...

But never mind all that, for now: even if it comes a good two decades too late, there is still a lot of value in Fenech’s recommendation to: a) disband the Planning Authority, and create an ‘Environment Authority’ instead, and; b) to “revise the local plans in favour of the environment”.

As things stand, then, the most that can be said for Fenech’s belated admission is… such a shame, that he himself didn’t have the ‘courage’ to ever conduct that same reform when he actually had the chance. That way, the country might at least have been spared just a little bit of the environmental damage it has had to sustain, over the past 20 years…

But that has to be weighed against two important considerations: one, that Tonio Fenech (like the President, the KTP, the combined local government of Gozo, all of Malta’s civil society, and practically every other relevant entity on the island) now acknowledges that this ‘political-industrial construction complex’ must be dismantled, sooner or later…

…and two, that – contrary to the opinions of many (including, sometimes myself) – it CAN be dismantled. Not, perhaps, in time to save what’s already been lost; but certainly, in time to reverse the loss of even more in future.

By my count, that leaves us with only two ‘relevant entities’ that have yet to make that all-important transition themselves; and which still do not comprehend that, unless we undertake an urgent root-and-branch reform of the entire planning sector today… there will, quite frankly, be nothing left to preserve tomorrow.

… and oh, look: they just happen to be the government of Malta, and the Planning Authority: i.e., the only ones that might actually be able to make a meaningful difference…