The Cottonera community development initiative : paving the way for empowerment and social integration in the Three Cities and Kalkara

Abstract

The Three Cities of Vittoriosa, Cospicua and Senglea, or as they are more popularly known, the Cottonera*, constitute a strikingly portentous conurbation. Their proximity to the sea has moulded the character, fortunes and evolution of this region: the growth and decline of buccaneering, merchant clippers and the Royal Navy's Mediterranean Fleet; the blitz on the docks during the Second World War and the resultant diaspora; the rundowns of HM Dockyard and the population haemorrhages caused by massive emigration in the Sixties - all affected the importance of the Cottonera in terms of direct and indirect employment, economic activity and status. The Cottonera had become a large urban metropolis and therefore a focus of commerce, culture, employment, political turmoil, industrial activity and poverty. In the last half century, only the latter has increased as the others withered: from being at the centre of the fortress economy the Cottonera receded it.tto what Shanahan & Ward (1995) described as 'geographical peripherality' as tourism and services emerged as the new pillars of the national economy. Nevertheless, people born within the confines of the great bastions built by succes5ive Grandmasters, are as 'much attached to their slice of land' (Guareschi, 1976) as were the people of Don Camillo' s 'Little World'. Whenever the Three Cities are mentioned, individually or collectively as a region, they provoke passionate react10ns of proud affection or of abject prejudice.