Reshaping our urban environments through street-based design policies – the Maltese experience

Abstract

Urban development in Malta has undergone an exponential growth in the past decades, borne within a narrow-minded approach that prioritised construction as a primary means of fuelling the economy. Most of this development imposed itself indiscriminately within long-established and tightly knit streets, destroying their social and physical character and impacting heavily on existing residential communities. Within this scenario, planning was, at best, largely ine!ective; at worst, it instigated such development through a number of policies that were insensitive to basic street principles. In an attempt to improve the design quality of streets in a tangible manner, the Malta Environment and Planning Authority embarked on a review of a key policy document, Development Control Policy and Design Guidance 2007 – a major tool used by architectural practitioners, planning assessors and decision makers alike. What started out as a document refinement has become a major policy overhaul, marking the departure from planning- and architecture-focused policy- making to a new urban design approach, a first for this small island state. Its basic premise is that better urban environments must start from better streets – a simple principle with deeply rooted implications regarding the way design should be approached and assessed.