Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1181922
19 LETTERS & EDITORIAL maltatoday | SUNDAY • 3 NOVEMBER 2019 Mikiel Galea Letters & Clarifications Perils of bad town planning DEVELOPING towns or villages with- out adequate planning risks turning our communities into miserable, intol- erable and unbearable contexts. The quality of our urban environ- ment, within which our communi- ties have to feel welcome, affects our quality of life. While planning may be a knife-edge balancing act between conflicting interests, if we do not invest in, and trust the outcomes of, socially- just forward-looking urban and rural planning, then we are risking the ex- ponential exacerbation of our current challenges. The well-being of a community is a complex and difficult balancing of interests of various forces, which shape private and public spaces. The conflict- ing interests become more complex when the forces have unequal access to the means and networks available for them to present their cases. Trusting in market forces to find the most socially-just, and the optimal out- come for the majority, is naive. Creating the best possible communi- ty spaces that maximise the well-being of all stakeholders, therefore, requires thoughtful and intricate planning, and especially dialogue involving national and local government and civil society, to ensure that the definition of pro- gress is not hijacked by those with the means to further material, partisan or short-sighted interests. We need to embolden politicians to act in good faith and without any interference in individual development permission decisions. The wishes of, and the electoral promises to, individ- ual members of the electorate should not be at the forefront to command decision-making. Politicians should resist the unnecessary pandering of their ribbon-cutting vanity. We need to embolden the applica- tion of social impact assessments as a scientific tool that contributes to knowledgeable urban and rural plan- ning. Rigour is essential to ensure that an urban and rural plan is informed by timely, scientific assessments. It is also essential that developers are held accountable when under-employing social impact assessments, merely as a checked-box on the to-do list. We need to re-fashion the Structure Plan that, by introducing, for the first time, a holistic view of spatial plan- ning, albeit imperfect, had a positive impact on development in Malta. SPED, on the other hand, needs to be radically over-hauled to become a more specific strategic document to guide development, within a robust monitoring system, and based on synergy with the major entities in the sector, namely Planning Authority, Environment and Resources Authority, Infrastructure Malta, Transport Malta, Ministry for Transport and Infrastruc- ture Projects, University of Malta to mention just a few. Prof. Andrew Azzopardi & Prof. Alex Torpiano, University of Malta No divine mercy ON May 16, a local newspaper report- ed on a tribute by Archbishop Charles Scicluna, Mission Lifeline and other local mourners to 850 migrants who had drowned when their boat capsized some 30 miles off the Libyan coast in 2015. Twenty-four corpses were brought to Malta. On that fateful morning, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat had told party supporters in Marsa: "They are literally trying to find people alive among the dead floating in the water." So much for the 'divine mercy' that Christians and Muslims are always bragging about! On September 28, the same newspa- per reported that a baby and toddler drowned when a migrant boat sank in the Aegean Sea. The news item went on to report that "hundreds of mi- grants and refugees have died in recent years while attempting to cross the Aegean Sea." The Christian Trinity or the Muslim Allah could at least have saved the toddler and the baby from drowning, as any compassionate human being would have done, even at the risk of his own life. John Guillaumier, St Julian's