Panel discussion: Making cities for people
Description
Seen from an urban perspective, the pandemic has revealed the extent of global vulnerabilities and inequalities. Cities have been at the forefront of the crisis. Fortunately,cities tend to be highly resilient. Now it is time to rethink urban spaces, recognizing the need to promote inclusive planning and taking regional dimensions into account. Human issues such as safety, life, sustainability and health are essential to successful city planning, placing human needs at the centre of thinking and planning for the cities of the future.
Objetives
- Discuss complex societal challenges: changing demographics and changing lifestyles.
- Analyse the ways people actually use—or could use—the spaces where they live and work.
- Methods and tools used to reconfigure cityscapes into landscapes.
- Spread awareness among the industry’s stakeholders.
- Help stakeholders make informed decisions based on scientific knowledge.
- Provide a platform of dialogue and exchange to expert businesses, government leaders, influential academics and researchers
Speakers
- Leonid Mckay – CEO of Housing Authority
- Sarah Scheiber – Co-Founder of Dawra Madwarna
- Ray Demicoli – Principal, De Micoli and Associates Architect
- Bjorn Bonello – President of Malta Chamber of Planners and Spatial Planning Consultant
- Norbert Gatt – Director at Restoration Directorate
Moderator: Jon Mallia
Panel Insight
Benefits of open spaces and key principles to achieve them
The need for open spaces is deeply felt in Maltese society. Open spaces within urban areas have a lot of potential economic, environmental, and social benefits.
Some of the social benefits of having open spaces are:
- They contribute to social cohesion and interaction within a community.
- It provides a space for play, for relaxation, for social recreation, for meeting friends, thus contributing to our well-being.
- It improves human health. Access to nature is a fundamental human need. Besides, it creates opportunities for physical activity, which allows us to lead active lifestyles.
- Social equity. Everybody should be able to move around within urban areas and access recreational opportunities without owning a private mode of transport.
Four key planning and design principles to bring about these benefits are:
Networks and connectivity. Green spaces should be connected to buildings and to other green spaces in a network-like fashion. Very often open spaces are isolated, surrounded by street networks or by parked cars. People should also be able from one open space to the other. A more people-centred approach to street design should be adopted.
Diversity and flexibility. Integrating different demographics if possible (for example, the elderly and children by putting places to sit near playgrounds).
Maximizing vegetation. The concept of trees, greenery and nature comes out as a strong theme when people are asked what they want out of public spaces. They provide shade, a sense of refuge and contact with nature.
Community engagement. This can be achieved through workshops. The process of understanding what people want, engaging with them, getting them to take part in the process, is just as important as the product.
Heritage
A sense of place gives members of the community a sense of belonging, which directly translate into their well-being. The restoration of fortifications that the Restoration Directorate undertook in Vittoriosa, Valletta, Mdina, and the Citadella between 2008 to 2015 has opened up to visitors spaces which were hitherto inaccessible. These and other projects have also increased awareness among the general public, and made them reconsider retrofitting and restoring the facades of their homes, instead of demolishing and starting anew.
The role of the government
There are social and economic consequences when the state assumes the role of a spectator when it comes to social and housing policy. These are some of them:
- Affordability issues and ‘ghettoization’.
- Gentrification.
- Proliferation of dilapidated properties, especially government-owned ones. These properties could become an important part of the community by giving them up for social housing.
In sum, spectator governments do not build cities for the people. The government should also play an active role even in times of an economic boom, because low-income earners and vulnerable people have limited access to homeownership and to the rental market.
The last years have witnessed a comeback of the government when it comes to shaping housing policy. Apart from social housing, the government currently offers, among other initiatives, equity sharing schemes for pairs that have just been through a separation between the ages of 40-50, and subsidies for those who are living in the private rented sector.
The importance of planning
The Planning Authority was set up in 1992, but the spatial planning profession is still not recognized. Anyone can participate or give planning services, sometimes to the detriment of the client. The Planning Authority is one of the entities that engages in most public consultations when writing policy and when taking development decisions. However, the situation will remain the same if the necessary training is not provided to the entities charged with implementing its policies.
The intervention of the PA is crucial, because market alone will fail to provide certain social goods. The incentives are to acquire, develop, and resell tracts of land, not to support urban regeneration, or opening community engagement channels to determine the real needs of the community.
The urgency to take more development decisions has led to watering down the forward planning role that the Planning Authority originally was intended for, and to focus more on development control. Development control is not the solution, as it leaves out many people, putting pressure on social housing and the fabric of communities.
There has been a dramatic increase in foreign nationals, some of them living in crowded conditions. This pushes the rents up, pricing out Maltese families. These foreigners are then seen as the cause of a problem, which creates tension.
One possible solution would be to institute schemes which establish a minimum percentage of units that must be destined to affordable housing
Updates and further information about the summit’s developments can be followed on the official blog and on its social media channels.
