Spaces for people : lessons from Valetta

Abstract

Barely two weeks ago, Valetta celebrated the 450th anniversary of its Foundation. To mark this occasion the Times of Malta re-printed a Special Number that was first published fifty years before, on the 28th March 1966, to mark the 400th Anniversary of the Foundation of Valetta. Practically all the twenty-four articles in this supplement looked at various aspects of Valetta’s past, except for the final one, by Perit Salvino Mangion (1) who wrote about the Valetta of the Future. In order to look forward into the future, it is normally always necessary for us to look back into the past, into history; in the context of this seminar, I found this article of greatest interest, because it is a vision of the future that was conceived fifty years ago. It really ought to be a picture of Valetta today, and therefore, by looking at it in detail, it can suggest to us how easy, or difficult, it is to anticipate the future.