Open spaces we don’t really want

To my surprise, the greatest objections to Piano’s plans are being made to his plans for Freedom Square. Not to the Parliament building as such. There were objections to that, of course, from people who cannot see that it fully complements the military architecture of Valletta (St James Cavalier in the back and the new city gate at the side) or people who fail to appreciate the role of a parliament in democratic life.

No, I mean the ones who lament the loss of “much needed open space”. But before we move to that let me remind the “traditionalist purists” (“give us the old opera house!”) that until the late 1960s that space was built. No walled city in the world would have placed a square next to the main gate. The gate tends to be the weakest spot in the wall, the point where the enemy would be most likely to breach and having a tight space would have given defenders a last-ditch opportunity to fight back from close quarters (if not confuse the infiltrators as they make their way in). Mdina is a great example: the “civilian” square is in the centre and the “military” square is at the point furthest from the main entrance.

And of course calling Freedom Square a “square” is an excessively generous description of what’s little more than empty space. No, it’s not simply the victim of that Maltese habit of using space either for parking or to clutter with plastic chairs and umbrellas. A square is a focal point (which is why they tend to host markets) and Freedom Square is simply space on the side of the route people usually take moving in and out of the city. Indeed, the Square is, in my view, the point which needs most urgent addressing. The ruins are a monument to our failure to act and the gate a monument to our sense of aesthetics but it’s Freedom Square the real mutilation to the architectural and urban structure of the city.

But back to the main subject. Alfred Mifsud wrote in today’s Indy. He’s generally positive about the entire project, by the way, and the point he makes about pedestrian access from Floriana to Valletta, imperiled as it is with the buses that go by is valid. Here’s Mifsud on the Piano’s proposal for Freedom Square:

I am sorry but this is just crazy. Not because there is anything wrong in having a parliament building in the City entrance; but because Valletta needs more not less open spaces. Freedom Square should be a people’s parliament not a representative’s parliament. It should be where people meet, talk, discuss, argue, demonstrate and do whatever is democratically allowed in the pursuit of freedom of expression. And this can be done in a pleasant environment with full view of St James Bastions by redeveloping exactly as Piano has suggested but without parliament dual building, which should be replaced by landscaped gardens instead of the present car park cum shopping complex.

Let’s put aside the silly (and communist-sounding) distinction between “people’s parliament” and “representative parliament”. Let’s also put aside the fact that a landscaped garden and a space where people demonstrate are hardly compatible ends. Why does Valletta need more open spaces, whatever they are?

Readers will hopefully forgive me for having to rely, once more, on the excellent writings of Mark-Anthony Falzon. Some months ago he wrote about communities, largely imagined, in whose name political agendas on the use of public space are being pushed. And since the rhetoric is so compelling, government (and opposition) buy in. Here’s Falzon on the “desires” of these “communities”:

There are three main types of desire. First, a perceived need for specialised — and sanitised — spaces of recreation (this is the speciality of the local councils). Second, desires that have to do with practices (festi, for example, or Good Friday processions) linked to local church/parish ‘communities’. Third, things like local facilities for team sports, which may be read as collective celebrations of the ancestral attachments I mentioned earlier.

My point is that ‘local communities’ tend to be formulaic. They also have depressingly unimaginative ideas about what they ought to look like. A couple of years ago, for example, Cospicua council in conjunction with the government (there, dialogue) embarked on a project to create a new recreational space for the area. Hundreds of thousands of euros on, we have the ghastly — and utterly useless — ‘Cottonera Garden’. The (good but misguided) intention of the council was to provide the people of Cospicua with a recreational space, irrespective of the indigenous patterns of leisure of the place. The mistake of the government was that it listened.

Falzon’s choice of example is salutary in the “Freedom Square as garden” debate. I don’t know how many more rehailitated gardens it will take before government, central and local, realise that, in effect people are not really interested. Oh, they might pay lip service but they vote with their feet and public gardens end up as places for teenagers to get sloshed or junkies to get high, if we’re so lucky to have them used. Which is why many local authorities abroad are transforming gardens into centres for community gardening (privatisation, in a way, of public space). Which is why the part I find most suspect about Piano’s plans is the garden in the ditch.

As someone who’s worked in Valletta for many years I cannot fathom why any office worker should want to spend time in a garden with high buildings all around. For, if there was something my colleagues and I were on the lookout for — as an alternative to the many hidden watering holes in the city — was vistas. That of the Grand Harour from the Upper Barracca. Of Marsamxett from il-Mandraġġ. And of the open sea from near Fort St Elmo which gives you a greater sense of freedom than any grotty garden would.

And Valletta residents? Don’t worry they have their open recreational spaces, away from spaces where “outsiders” hang out. They won’t be enjoying the fresh air in Freedom Square Garden.