Spacing Associate Editor Shawn Micallef is in Europe during December and is posting sporadically throughout the month. — The Editors
Just to add to the sprawl debate, it certainly isn’t a North American phenomenon. Here in Malta, the same thing is happening. This is one of the densest places on the planet —- it’s a tiny island nation that could fit inside of Toronto. Since I was a kid, it was Malta’s urban form that I found most interesting. It looked so deep in pictures, like a labyrinth of houses and buildings that were much more interesting than my Tecumseh sprawl (the mini-Mississauga of Windsor). Whether or not true urban life existed there wasn’t important —- the built form, even the small towns, was compact (it’s strange when that urban form is really a sleepy town in disguise —- I’m getting used to the rules being different here).
Today I wandered, in the rain, around the walled capital, Valetta. I hid under arches, and snuck down passageways, trying to stay dry, but my feet were soaked soon and I ended up buying an umbrella for 3.75 Maltese Pounds (so maybe $14 Canadian). There were collapsible umbrellas for just one pound, but those are terrible and people should always buy the long pointy David Nivenish ones because they look better and will never let you down. Valetta is truly urban, and I think I even found a remaining porn theatre hidden down a dirty and derelict arcade, out of view of the Christmas decorations and on the main street (I was too scared to go in but it was THE vision of Midnight Cowboy Times Square urbanity I didn’t think exists anymore). Valetta is pretty straight now, but after WWII it had a fairly seedy side to it. When the long-time Maltese (Labour) Prime Minster, Dom Mintoff, was interviewed by Mike Wallace for 60 Minutes during the 1970s, and challenged as to why Malta was cozying up to the Soviets at the time, he famously shut down Wallace by saying “Why not, all the American 7th Fleet left us was condoms in the harbour.”
However, where I’m staying now, on the other side of the island, is a collection of new fancy villas that sprawl down a hill to the sea (pictured below). It’s stuff like this that causes huge flash floods in Malta — where once there was enough open ground to absorb the winter rains, now it’s all paved, and the water runs fast and in great volume down roads-that-were-valleys, flooding out the low-lying areas, like my dad’s hometown of Msida. For an island so small, I’m still amazed at the amount of real countryside that’s still left though. It’s encouraging to read here that the Ministry of the Environment is trying to preserve that land and stop the sprawl to a sustainable degree.
