Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1387622
8 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 27 JUNE 2021 INTERVIEW From a 'cage', to a 'gated community' In one of your interventions against the db project, you ar- gued that "a bully has been allowed to enter resident's homes; and in this case the PA made a clear choice, in favour of bullies and against resi- dents." Was that comment only about this particular project? Or do you see it as applicable to the direction the country is tak- ing as a whole? I suppose the easy answer would be that: yes, it is definitely applicable to more than just the db project alone. It is somehow a paradigm, a model, that has been replicated – and is being replicated – over and over again. In this case, however, it is both the project itself that has attract- ed so much disagreement; but also, the model that it replicates. And we see this, not only in the record number [17,000] of ob- jections; but also in the fact that money has been raised twice, in a very short time, to fight it le- gally. This is a case of ordinary peo- ple, reaching into their own pockets, to challenge precisely this kind of… arrogance, I would say. Personally, however, what I find so unacceptable is that this project goes against everything that – to me; but to many oth- er people, too – represents the kind of Malta that we would like to live in. And this is not about 'false nostalgia'. It's not about simply 'opposing change', for its own sake. It's also about the kind of community we really want to create here; and the kind of space we would like to inhabit… but also, to create. Because space is created; it is not merely passively inhabited. And the type of space we are creating, with this project in particular – and others like it – not only makes us 'spectators', or passive 'consumers', within a system… but it even reduces us to mere 'commodities'. It is thanks to us – thanks to our space, our time, our atten- tion - that a project like this can become a financial success: not for the country as a whole, but only for those promoting it. Abd yet, in the process that led to its approval by the PA… we – the ordinary people, the members of residential communities, etc. – became simply part of a system that is generating wealth for the few. So on top of everything else that is objectionable about this particular project – the fact that it is a private initiative that ex- cludes the community; and al- so, ultimately, an imposition on public land – what we are look- ing at is also the creation of a so- ciety in which the people them- selves are both 'excluded', and, quite literally, 'commodified'… On a separate note: you re- cently blogged about the 50th anniversary of Frans Sammut's seminal novel, 'Il-Gagga'. Even the title – 'The Cage' – hints at a similar paradigm: a feel- ing of 'helplessness', of being 'trapped' in a system. Would you agree, then, that – despite all the changes of the past 50 years – some of those concerns remain relevant today? To be frank, I don't see that many similarities between the two scenarios. 'Il-Gagga' was written in a very different his- torical moment – and also, I would say, a very different mo- ment in our literary history. It is much more about the individual psychology of [main character] Fredu Gambin. Of course, there is the national dimension, which is encapsulat- ed in that final scene: the count- down to Independence – from 10 to zero – at the end of the novel. But apart from the Inde- pendence of the nation, or of the wider community… it is primar- ily the independence of Fredu Gambin himself. The 'cage' he was trying to break out of was… all around him, yes; but it was also a psy- chological cage which he had created within himself, because of his egocentrism. So I would say it's a little more complex, in the novel. Nonetheless, if you take just the central image – the 'cage' – then yes, you could certainly draw a few parallels. To me, for instance, it immediately calls to mind the image of a 'gated com- munity'. Because that's what we're talk- ing about, in the case of the db project… and also, in the sense of the sort of space we are cre- ating generally. It's just another 'gated community', to add to the rest. For there are other exam- ples: Tigne, for instance, is ar- guably an even worse case… in terms of architecture, landscape, and how the rest of the commu- nity is generally excluded. But to cut to the chase: these are all real estate projects, at the end of the day. They're all about selling very expensive apart- ments, to very rich people: who may or may not actually live in them… and who will certainly not engage with the local com- munity. But there are other issues, al- so arising from this concept of a gated community, that have important implications. One of the things that really angered me, in the second presentation [of the db project], was the way that education was... how can I put it?... Disrespected. Mis- treated. The total disregard that The db project in Pembroke is about more than just the usual speculative land-grab. Prof. ADRIAN GRIMA - associate professor of Maltese literature, and a vocal critic of overdevelopment – argues that it also encapsulates our collective failure to ever 'imagine a different kind of Malta' Raphael Vassallo rvassallo@mediatoday.com.mt JAMES BIANCHI