As news emerged of Perit Patrick Calleja having been elected as the new President of Din L-Art Ħelwa, Newspoint reached out to Prof. Alex Torpiano, Dean of the Faculty for Built Environment, and outgoing Executive President of the NGO, to talk a bit about the achievements achieved and goals reached while the team was under his helm.
His particular focus was on Heritage and Environment Protection, as he proudly guided an HEP sub-committee which has not only been rigorous in identifying all examples of inappropriate development proposals, but has been proved right by a number of court cases.
“On at least three occasions, we convinced the Court that the permit issued was irregular, and was consequently struck down, even though the relative building had already been constructed. I was also very proud of how the eNGOs came together with the National Protest organised in May 2023, under the logo of ‘Xebbajtuna’.”
Although DLĦ has always believed international bodies and their response are important, it has always maintained that the protection of the environment and of heritage is, ultimately, “our responsibility, and we cannot expect others to fight our battles.”
Part of the role of DLĦ is to maintain its watchdog role for the protection of our landscape and rich architectural legacy of our country. The HEP team scans all applications - identifying the potentially worrying ones is quite a laborious process.
“Generally, we would immediately file an objection as soon as this is identified. If we do not do this, and later on we decide that an intervention is warranted, we would not be able to do so unless we had previously registered our interest/concern.”
After the first determination, the committee decides whether to proceed with an appeal to the Tribunal, and, at a later stage, possibly with an appeal to the Courts.
The key to understanding the how and why of DLĦ filing numerous objections, is the understanding of proper spatial planning.
“Proper spatial planning requires vision and leadership. Leadership is required because that is the only way the collective well-being will be prioritised over individual interests. It is certainly much easier to say yes to development construction proposals, which promise jobs, investment, and hence contribution to the GDP - which is intrinsically a distorted method of measuring economic growth - then to take a long term view, which may require saying no to some proposals, in the interest of longer term benefits for the community.”
Some might feel that overdevelopment is taking the attention away from the need to preserve our heritage.
According to Prof. Torpiano, development is potentially a positive term, if it is in support of a better quality of life for everybody.
“But ‘good’ development may require less building, less roads. So I would prefer to talk about over-building. It is important to have a wide understanding of what we mean by heritage. We must not think that the heritage that deserves preservation is limited to a handful of chapels/churches, or to some towers/forts/palaces. Heritage includes the built fabric of our villages, the safeguarding of urban areas, our landscape, skylines, our agriculture, our sea.”
Is there sufficient awareness of this? Unfortunately not, says Prof. Torpiano.
In the passing of the baton to Architect Calleja, Prof. Torpiano says he hopes Perit Calleja will push forward a similar agenda, in a style which is personal to him.
“Perit Calleja was chosen because he has the same values as the membership/supporters of DLĦ - In 2025, we will celebrate 60 years of activism, under the leadership of different Executive Presidents - and over these years, our message and mission have not changed much”.
