Marsa 2050 – A Vision for the Re-Development of Malta’s Industrial Heartland
Marsa is synonymous with industrial harbour activities, with the Power Station, and with ship-building. It is closely associated with sports, and with horse-racing. It is unfortunately also associated with pollution, industrial decline, immigrants and other socio-economic problems. At the same time, it is practically the gate through which all north-south traffic has to pass, and, in particular, through which all journeys to the airport or to the Harbour, have to traverse. Strategically, it is therefore optimally located. It has other assets, ranging from the archaelogical to built and industrial heritage, from the visual and functional relationship with the sea to proximity to educational and employment opportunities.
This is the theme that University of Malta final year students, reading for M.Arch and M.Eng. degrees, have addressed over this past nine months, as part of their Final Projects. The students have been invited to consider these questions:
- What could this Marsa/Inner Harbour Area look like in 2050?
- What modes of transport, and which routes, including across harbour links, could be catered for?
- What infrastructural systems would be required to make the zone “self-sufficient” in terms of water resources, in terms of waste management, in terms of integrated energy production and distribution?
- If the area could accommodate a balanced multi-use development for future residents, office users, industry, what social amenities would be required?
- How can green landscape be brought back into the area? Could the zone even produce food? What are the bio-diversity issues that can arise in this area?
- What sustainable redevelopment would be appropriate to take into account changes in sea-level?
These are obviously difficult but exciting questions. The students addressed these issues working in multi-disciplinary groups, producing, firstly, different strategic visions for the area. In a second stage, each student proposed and detailed a project that supported one of the formulated strategies. These projects are exhibited in A Station, Marsa Power Station, courtesy of Enemalta plc.
The Faculty for the Built Environment is organising a Business Breakfast to demonstrate the work of the students, over this past year, to the media, to politicians, to local authorities, to infrastructural services providers, to planning actors, to NGOs and to other interested entities. The Business Breakfast is proposed as an opportunity to present the main themes that have emerged from this work, notably transport, water, energy resources and waste management, clean industry and food production, but especially a vision for a new model for urban planning and development. This offers an opportunity, for civil society to engage in a proper debate on how to handle planning for the future, as against the current, rather stale, battles on ODZ or on high-rise/low-rise. Spatial planning ought to be much more than this.
The Exhibition will be open to the public on Friday 15 July, 17:00 to 20:00, Saturday 16 and Sunday 17 July 09:00 to 13:00. This is also the first opportunity for the public to visit the underground A Station of the Marsa Power Station.