ABSTRACT
The chapter explores whether there is a contradiction between the necessity to attract investment and promote economic concerns against the need for a robust planning and conservation regime which seeks to direct development to particular locations, encourage particular standards for that development and, indeed, ‘regulate out’ locations where such development would be inappropriate. It shows how the protections are governed in relation to the high-rise proposal, and how concerns about conservation are balanced with the need to attract investment. The chapter focuses on one tall building proposal as emblematic of the wider issues affecting Malta in relation to new tall buildings. It seeks to examine the negotiation of the particular high-rise proposal within wider debates about the future of the country and the way in which conservation, and planning more generally, is succeeding in protecting the historic character of the country.
