Democratisation in planning and design: planning a permeable public square

In March 2017 Social Dialogue Minister Helena Dalli and the Chairman for the Consultative Council for the South MP Silvio Parnis announce “that work on Piazza Antoine de Paule in Paola, where government is investing €3 million in an effort to regenerate the area, has resumed”. This is directed at a section of the URBACT REPAIR Action Plan compiled in 2010-2011 with the input of its Urban Local Group. The purpose of the Action Plan “(was)…to prepare an integrated approach for Sustainable Planning for Urban Regeneration (SPUR) for the township of Paola specifically aiming at the township area and Corradino…”. It aimed at the regeneration of the area by projects dedicated to transportation lings and revitalised living conditions.

The Repair Action Plan “… is essentially a citizen’s action plan…the main thrust of the plan is based on five elements:

1. the use of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Guidelines as a platform for planning for tourism and transit
2. the implementation of Transit Oriented Development Strategy to spur regeneration and transit
3. the use of Character Appraisal as an ideal tool to analyse context and landscape;
4. the use of node projects to push the actions and reach the objectives of the plan and
5. finding the financial backing for the projects so these may be actuated.”

PLANNING AND DESIGN PROPOSALS
Planning and designing an environment and context which people feel related to will only happen if the community is directly involved. Following this principle an exhibition and consultation weekend was set up to provide a background to the concept and an architect to assist voters in understanding the various ideas. The “people were critical, enthusiastic and extremely collaborative. In three days 890 citizens voted for three design schemes prepared by the local council”.

The scheme chosen by the community was also presented to various government entities and for specific areas of contention, meetings were organised with government and non-government entities especially Transport Malta and the General Retailers, Traders Union (GRTU), the local parish representatives. Further design details were applied by the Council architect and presented to the Planning Authority (then Malta Environment and Planning Authority) and the public. Although the overall scheme of the square remained true to the proposal chosen by the community, design details changed especially connected to; the hard and soft landscaping, the church parvis, the pavements and siting of bus terminals.

RESOLVING CONTENTIOUS ISSUES: WHAT THE PEOPLE WANT!
There is a definite legal but also ethical if not moral obligation to address “what people want” in planning. This is not only tied to consultation and transparency, but planning has also financial and democratic aspects which may be often over-looked, compromising consensus. The issues which effected the transition from the peoples’ aspirations to the actualisation and implementation of the final project of the Paola Square are multi-faceted and complex. The demands of the local citizens were in fact simpler and involved less interventionist or interventionist changes with low impact results. Some of the non-interventionist aspects included; maintaining the balustraded parvis around the church. The latter comprised; removing bus stations and stops from the square altogether, removal of pavements and increased soft landscaping. These objectives were supported by the Local Council and published in the Design and Planning Brief at the initial planning stages. Whilst applying democratisation was to a great degree a success in the planning process the design aspect of the project dampened the potential to transpose the citizens’ aspirations.

NEGOTIATING AND RESULTS
The negotiating and financing process took three years. The negotiations were based on aspects of design which remained unresolved effecting permeability and the concept of shared space.

1. Removal of pavements and physical barriers: In the initial proposal and design the plan included the removal of pavements and physical barriers with the installation of removable spherical bollards. The driving concept was to have a flat surface to support fully access for all and to have shared space with a protected public realm. This also facilitated shopping turning the square to a mall as well as providing a domain to stage public activities using the entire square including the dead space in front of the church. This issue was not resolved although the application of such systems was implemented in other embellishment projects.
2. New soft-landscaping scheme: The initial proposal and design included soft landscaping with trees and shrubs in movable planters which could be changed in configuration from time to time. The driving concept was to provide a canopy and shade over the main public area. This concept was changed to a more permanent planting scheme.
3. Re-routing buses and removing bus stages: The proposal considered the re-routing of buses which transformed the square into a roundabout. The objective mainly was to reduce traffic congestion, bus movements in the core area of the square and pollution. This was applied partially. In the process the Local Council negotiated with Transport Malta (TM) the elimination of articulated buses. This issue was resolved with a change in the provider not through negotiation.
4. The re-designing of the church parvis: The initial proposal considered the maintaining of the parvis. Its redesigning was met with significant opposition by locals. The negotiation failed in this case with the application of an open form of design.

Attempts to finance the project by ERDF failed. Its implementation of the plan was only possible through funding supplied from the Consultative Council for the South and through direct support from its project office. In 2015 through its establishment the Paola Square project became a priority as a response by the new government to resolve standing congestion issues and spur a long-awaited project.

CONCLUSIONS
The experience of democratisation in planning and design was one of the earliest in the Maltese system where citizens were asked to propose a favoured design and consulted repeatedly on aspects of it. However as underlined, the design process was not as successful. This result was mostly due to:

1. Citizens’ participation and opinion of design is often overlooked with a very limited training for architects to design around public consultation, and
2. a selected number of public agencies unable to respond to citizens’ views especially on transport: national interest often prevailed.

It has been however an important learning curve where consultation has been significant with the Consultative Council for the South referring to locals’ views at every stage; including current implementation.

Written by Malcolm Borg, Global Advisor, UN Global Compact - Cities Programme and EU Project Coordinator; www.heritagenterprise.au@gmail.com
 

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