In this afternoon’s session of The Boardroom, which aired live on WhosWho.mt’s Facebook page, Antoine Zammit, a senior lecturer at the Faculty for the Built Environment at the University of Malta, and founder and director at Studjurban, stressed the importance of three pillars when approaching urban planning.

For Dr Zammit and many professionals in urban planning, the conversation must be on how to marry three main pillars: density, land-use and mix – that is providing a space for a mixture of activities and interests.

He stressed that the three elements work together, adding that ‘density’ does not necessarily have to lead to over-crowding, or private activities where the personal car is king.

“We associate density as being negative, when actually we can exploit the fact that we are the densest country in Europe and celebrate this by carving out a sustainable mode of transportation while also encouraging walkability,” he said.

Through his architecture and design firm, Studjurban, Dr Zammit shares the development of a pilot project for several local councils with the aim of creating pedestrianised zones in town centres.

Speaking on a general, Governmental level, Dr Zammit says “at one point, we need to take clear decisions – decisions that are going to hurt some people, but it is just the way it is”.

On this note, he called for a deeper understanding by urban governance bodies on inclusivity of diverging interests by different stakeholders – such as NGOs, private enterprise and ordinary citizens – and to weigh up those interests to form clear, achievable environmental and economic targets.

Dr Zammit turns the conversation to how pro-green economy arguments are communicated, advocating for environmentalists and urban planners to adapt their language in a way that makes sense to their audience.

“If it’s just a question of saying something will yield benefits in years down the line, you won’t sell it to people. People do not care about the long-term saving or benefit. It cannot be simply about that. On an individual level, it’s about trying to make people experience an improved quality of life

“People, after COVID, have started to appreciate the importance of socialisation. Things we thought were difficult to achieve have been achieved somewhat, and people are highly adaptable.

“Portugal is a good example of a country that has a fantastic green strategy. Because of this strategy, high-worth people are actually leaving Malta and moving there, because it is a better quality of life. There is no question about it.

“The truth is that investing in the environment means you are investing in the human capital a country wishes to attract, you are drawing the brains that are going to contribute economically to your country,” he said.

Dr Zammit continues by saying big cities have realised the importance of reversing the traditional economic model where the social and environmental pillars are distant second and third places to the economy.

“Cities are showing us that this can and should be reversed. It’s about working at different levels and It’s important that one learns to speak the right language. We ultimately also have an element of convincing to do,” he says.

Contextualising his remarks, Dr Zammit said when dealing with developers through his work at Studjurban, he argues against turning a 20-unit block of apartments into a 30-unit block based on higher profitability when building fewer but better quality units.

“We know what we have to achieve, but we have to sell it using a different language. Ultimately we have to understand that people have different interests, so speak that language in a way that makes sense,” he says.