Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/904009
maltatoday SUNDAY 19 NOVEMBER 2017 16 News HISTORY The fort at Tigné Point was developed by the Knights of St John in 1792 and used by the British forces from 1805 to 1979. In 1979 the fort, barracks, foreshore, lesiure facilities (football club, lido) were returned to the ownership of the Maltese government. Many of the barracks were subsequently redeveloped as social housing, but by the 1990s much of the area had fallen into disrepair. In 1992, the 13.5ha site was proposed as a prime development opportunity for a low-rise (six- storey) project. Originally, the Structure Plan in 1990 had emphasised urban design matters for such a strategic location opposite Valletta, a World Heritage Site: "buildings along the waterfront areas of both sites should reinforce and add to the sense of enclosure which contain the Harbour and maintain its unparalleld visual splendor". SELLING THE VIEW IT'S something of a given that a great view will jack up the price of that property you've been keeping an eye on. But a recent- ly-published academic paper takes that truism apart to reveal its deep-seated neoliberal guts... and uses the Tigne Point project as a clear case study of the way such places become mere "sites of value extraction for capital rather than a site for human liv- ing". Writing in the journal Urban Studies, Janet Speake (Liverpool Hope University) charts the de- velopment of the Tigne Point project from inception to execu- tion, in an attempt to show how such urban initiatives play out as ideal demonstration of the motors of neoliberal capitalism, where what matters is generat- ing a steady fount of profit ahead of providing suitable dwellings for people. With Tigne Point – and all that it implies – now puttering away comfortably, lodged as it has be- come in the day-to-day lives to many Maltese (to say nothing of the upwardly mobile expats who gravitate to such upmarket areas like bees to honey), the study makes for some interesting if sobering reading. Particularly since it considers "the view" of Valletta as a key element in the project's lucrative success... a fact that will only come into sharper focus during the com- ing year. "For Valletta, this may be sig- nificant for its status as Euro- pean Capital of Culture 2018, and the desirability of gazing on the city looks set to increase," Speake writes in the article, en- titled 'Urban development and visual culture: Commodifying the gaze in the regeneration of Tigne' Point, Malta'. A view to a kill(ing) Drawing on a plethora of high- end theorists to bolster her case, Speake gets at how visual culture and urban development tend to be interlinked for the purposes of profit-generation in a capital- ist system. She argues that the nature, purpose and execution of the most recent redevelop- ment of Tigne' Point is char- acterised by a clear move away from creating livable spaces for people which conserve the ar- eas of historical and vernacular character, in favour of a space which exists primarily to satisfy market forces. "The revitalisation of Tigne' Point was reinvented as an ex- clusive commercial and profit- driven regeneration scheme, in line with global trends towards financialisation of property de- velopment," Speake writes, be- fore getting to one of the most crucial aspects of her study: the idea that the view of Valletta was commodified – less gener- ously, we could even say 'weap- onised' – to make the Tigne' Point apartments even more of a desirable prospect. A 'nice view' may be something of a self-evi- dent perk for any development, but Speake delves into a wide ar- ray of scholarship to show that it's actually a pretty deep-rooted phenomenon. How neoliberal capitalism helped shape the Tigné Point project By TEODOR RELJIC