Risk in a changing urban environment : anxieties of heritage, identity and culture

Abstract

The purpose of this ethnographic research is to investigate how the transformation of Sliema’s townscape has been continuously affecting its identity and social community: an in-depth participant observation of everyday culture and a socio-cultural analysis of the spatial shifts. These changes become evident through Sliema’s visual and auditory culture, containing political and socio-cultural information. A multi-sensorial research design was developed to document and elicit this sociological data. It enabled engagement with various spaces by applying the urban and methodological implications of the Situationists’ dérive with the visual and auditory stimuli, adopted from the field of humanist geography and cultural sociology. The motive of this psychogeographic approach is twofold: (i.) the identification of dissimilarities in geographic territories and (ii.) how the former, through a deconstructive method, are conditioning citizens’ behaviour and decision-making. Rhythm of life in different spaces was also considered. The current discourse on Sliema’s heritage and tall buildings was scrutinised, gathering relevant data about the effects of rapid and constant development, and how these architectural changes may pose threats to culture and society. The concept of detraditionalisation was thoroughly examined to assess how loss of the imagined past may lead to remembered amnesia and an identity crisis. The townscape philosophy of facades together with different building materials, as part of Sliema’s architectural fabric, portray relevant information of Malta’s political climate, which is deciphered by way of engagement with the streetscape. The multi-sensorial experience of the drift in this urbanised landscape was documented through photographs of the streetscape to evince the current visual rhetoric. The ambience of Sliema was analysed to detect different sounds, and how their reverberations resonate within the social fabric. Noise, as an auditory stimulus, becomes a tool of analysis for cultural and social narratives. The study drew out different temporalities by means of the visual language that is communicated through the physical landscape. This data was evaluated and presented to authorities and eNGOs in the respective disciplines: architecture, heritage, environmental planning and social policy. The results may serve as a platform for the contestation of power and rights in an urbanised Mediterranean locality and, essentially, for the implementation of new policies to sustain its architectural and historical value in development strategies.