This is not the first time I have written about the rapidly deteriorating environmental scene.

I recently attended a residents’ meeting with Ray Demicoli, the architect for the trade fair grounds project. The meeting was organised by the Naxxar local council. I must congratulate Mr Demicoli on his erudite and calm delivery in both official languages even when under pressure.

However, his speech was very much that of an estate agent trying to sell this ‘wonderful’ new property in Naxxar to people who already reside in the ‘village’. Mr Demicoli’s romantic vision of village streets and piazzas, with people out on their front porch enjoying the cooler air after sundownwas rapidly blown to smithereens by the imagery of up to seven plus one-storey buildings housing almost 500 apartments.

His romantic delivery went as far as to say that ‘the family’ was graciously limiting the built-up footprint to provide and give access to open and green areas to the public, and that the apartments will be affordable, as well as other nonsense.

The scale of the project on its own will greatly increase traffic in the already overloaded access routes and nobody can deny that. What wasn’t mentioned during the meeting (or I failed to hear it) was that there is already a lot of development going on in the surrounding area, with big villas being torn down and apartments sprouting up instead. Most people were baffled and visibly irritated at the way the meeting was proceeding. It transpired that absolutely no impact assessments have so far been commissioned.

As one of the residents pointed out, the accuracy of these can be questionable for these exercises can surely be tweaked to give the desired results. As for pedestrian access, ‘only’ Alley 7 in St Lucy Street will be opened but what’s to stop ‘them’ requesting more access in the future, thus destroying the very nature of these typical and quaint alleys?

I welcome my friend and colleague Luciano Micallef’s article in last week’s The Sunday Times of Malta, and encourage more artists to come out and ditch the ‘don’t bite the hand that feeds you’ fears, and openly oppose the savage overdevelopment which is rampant throughout the country.

Recent history shows that governments can and have been influenced by lobbies such as the hunters, LGBT, and most definitely the dreaded and ruthless developers, big and small.

The whole island is under threat and like-minded citizens (where are the students?) should unite and do whatever it takes to make our short-sighted politicians see sense before the island’s very own identity is irreparably lost.

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