Town planning tends to cater for vehicles before people. This has resulted in places with great potential for public space, like church squares, being taken up by parked cars and roads, leaving little space for people and public outdoor activities.
As previously mentioned the coast is the perfect place to find respite from the crowded country. Yet this precious resource has been reduced and cut off by the roads that run alongside it.
The program will aim to address these issues through the design of space for community activities, for everyday life, for public expression of Malteseness, whatever that may be.
Malta has a very high population density – 420000 crowding an area of 112 square miles. Industrialization and tourism in particular have eaten up a good slice of the islands. Moreover these, together with an above average car ownership of an average three cars per family, are served by an overextensive road system (of rather poor quality) which have eaten up more valuable land. The disproportionate building boom of the last ten years or so which only now seems to be coming to an end have exacerbated the problem of living space for the Maltese.
ReplyDeleteTown Planning tends to cater for the needs of industry, commerce, tourism, housing and roads before those of the people to an extent that places with great “feel good” potential for them have been sacrificed for roads, carparks, factories, hotels, beach establishments and high rise apartments.