Enough is enough, exasperated St Julian’s residents insist

Old photos of St Julian's in general - and Spinola bay in particular - will come as a shock to people familiar only with the area as it looks today.

Far from the shapeless urban sprawl that greets today's visitor to the popular nightlife spot, there was a time - not too long ago - when Spinola Palace stood virtually alone upon a small promontory above the bay.

The only nearby buildings consisted only in a handful of isolated fisherman's shacks, built into and around the same palace's arched boathouses on the foreshore.

A few decades later, the Palace that gives the entire area its name is no longer even visible from the streets below: having long been swallowed up by haphazard accretions of buildings of various heights and architectural styles, built independently of each other, and evidently without much consideration for how the entire sprawl would one day affect the area's overall aesthetic appeal.

Even now, cranes still choke the skyline above this confused riot of building sites. For ever since the first mega-development boom got under way in the 1980s, construction in the area seems to have never ceased.

Throughout all this, long-suffering residents have endured all the noise, dust and inconvenience associated with living in an endless development zone, without ever complaining too loudly.

But news that the Malta Environment and Planning Authority is now considering no fewer than nine large scale construction projects in the same area has finally tipped the scales, and provoked a chorus of disapproval.

Enter a pressure groups named 'Save St Julian's', which will be holding a public protest next Saturday against over-development in the neighbourhood.

"Over the years developers have been nibbling at the village, gradually transforming it without any overall plan for the area as a whole," Carol Galea Souchet, one of the spokespersons for this fledging organisation, told MaltaToday. "Even though we have a structure plan, architects seem to be very clever at finding loopholes in it and using them to get projects through which go against the spirit of the Local Plan.

"We feel that unless we put pressure on the authorities it is going to become impossible to live in St Julian's."

Asked to specify what problems are caused by such concentrated urbanisation, Galea Souchet rattles off a veritable litany of grievances.

"Air pollution caused by increased traffic... an increase in traffic congestion... noise pollution, as more apartments will be rented out to unruly youths on holiday who have no respect for others... and the police seem ineffective when it comes to doing anything about it..."

Furthermore as buildings grow taller in the competion for views, their combined effect within narrow lanes is to block out air, light and sun from all surrounding residences. According to Galea Souchet, this is turning the village core into a slum area.

"It is already impossible for old people and parents with babies to walk through their own street as some roads are too narrow for a pavement and traffic has increased greatly."

So far, these and other complaints have largely been limited to street-level grumbling. But with the emergence of the Save St Julian's action group, it seems that an otherwise unspoken angst is finally going to find a voice.

"Residents are enthusiastic that finally someone is doing something," Galea Souchet asserts. "They feel that the area is over-developed and that we cannot go on building massive blocks in an area with narrow streets..."

Still, the costruction lobby is notoriously powerful, in an island which remains so very dependant on development to motor an otherwise stagnating economy. In fact similar efforts to conserve other village cores have been less than successful. How confident is the Save St Julian's group that its efforts will succeed where others have failed?

"We hope that the authorities will listen to reason. We are not out to stop development but to ensure that the necessary studies are carried out before any of the applications are processed."

Nor are their efforts limited strictly to the Spinola bay area of St Julian's. Concerns have also been raised about a possible 'descheduling' of the adjacent Balluta valley.

"MEPA has received a request from some companies which own land at Balluta valley, and are requesting a downgrading of the scheduling, as they have a right to do according to law," Galea Souchet explains.

"It is to be noted that MEPA's scheduling of the valley as Grade 2 is already not very robust. Any further downgrading will provide little or no protection for this area of natural conservation. One can take as a parallel the two houses that previously stood alongside this very valley; these were given Scheduled Grade 2 protection... but in spite of that, MEPA allowed them to be demolished."

Above all, the Save St Julian's group is concerned that the entire area - already overbuilt as it is - simply cannot take the sheer amount of development currently being proposed.