Origins of planning on island and its evolution : a study of human settlements

Abstract

Planning is a very vast subject, covering almost every item in our built environment, and as I started reading about the subject and gathering information, it immediately appeared that to make a comprehensive study on the evolution of planning and covering every item found it its definition would first of all take a lot of time and secondly end up having to produce a hefty document. So I decided to limit my work to what was purely related to the development of human settlement throughout the ages. During the last decade or so, Malta went through a new wave of rapid and accelerated expansion of its town and villages, something which is still being experiences. This has happened mostly as a result of the increase in population which therefore meant more households and houses. In several other places, such expansion has led to an unsatisfactory overall development which has caused a lot of harm to the environment.