“Ever-growing Amman”, Jordan: Urban expansion, social polarisation and contemporary urban planning issues

doi:10.1016/j.habitatint.2008.05.005

Habitat International

Volume 33, Issue 1, January 2009, Pages 81-92

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.habitatint.2008.05.005 Get rights and content

Abstract

Amman the primate capital city of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan currently has a population in excess of 2 million, but in 1924 it consisted of little more than a collection of dwellings and some 2000–3000 inhabitants. The present paper sets out to document and explain the phenomenal expansion of “ever-growing Amman”. The physical geography of the urban region and the early growth of the city are considered at the outset and this leads directly to consideration of the highly polarised social structuring that characterises contemporary Amman. In doing this, original data derived from the recent Greater Amman Municipality's Geographical Information System are presented. In this respect, the essential modernity of the city is exemplified. The employment and industrial bases of the city and a range of pressing contemporary issues are then considered, including transport and congestion, the provision of urban water under conditions of water stress and privatisation, and urban and regional development planning for the city. The paper concludes by emphasizing the growing regional and international geopolitical salience of the city of Amman at the start of the 21st century.

Section snippets

Introduction to Amman: a modern metropolis of geopolitical significance

The growth of Amman in the second half of the 20th century through to the start of the 21st century has been phenomenal, in terms of its population, physical extent and regional geopolitical importance. Recently, Al-Asad (2005) has referred to what he describes as “ever-growing Amman”. What was in the early 1920s a small town of little more than 2000–3000 people is today a major regional city with a recorded population of 2.17 million people at the end of 2006 (Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, 2006

The physical environment of the city

Amman is located on the undulating plateau that makes up the north-west of Jordan (see Fig. 1 for a general location map). The original site of the city occupied seven hills or ‘jabals’ around the Wadi ‘Ras el Ain which flows north-east from the plateau toward the River Zarqa basin. The original central part of the city was at an altitude of between 725 and 800 m. Expansion of the city in the past 25 years has resulted in the occupation of some 19 hills in total with an altitudinal extension to

The development of Amman and the growth of its population: “ever-growing Amman”

Amman was named after the Ammonites who originally ruled the area that makes up the present-day city. Kadhim and Rajjal (1988) argue that the year 1200 BC marks the origins of Amman as an urban settlement, as it was at this juncture that the Ammonites took the hill that dominates the present-day city centre as the site of their capital, Rabbat Ammoun. There followed a series of occupations, by the Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans and Moslems (Kadhim & Rajjal, 1988).

In the 1860s,

The polarised social structure of Greater Amman

A correlate of this history of rapid growth has been the marked social divide that has come to characterise the residential quarters of present-day Amman. Contemporary guides to Jordan comment directly on the marked social cleavages that characterise the urban space of the city of Amman:

“Residents talk openly of two Ammans, although in truth there are many. Eastern Amman (which includes Downtown) is home to the urbanised poor: it's conservative, more Islamic in its sympathies, and has vast

The industrial and employment structure of the city

Notwithstanding some government efforts to decentralize economic activities, Amman remains the main economic centre of the Kingdom. Over 80% of all industrial and service activities are to be found located in the capital region of Greater Amman together with the industrial suburbs and peri-urban zone toward Zarqa and the north-east. As might be expected, general levels of prosperity and incomes are higher in the capital. According to the 2002/2003 Household Expenditure and Income Survey (

Urban transport

If there is a single word that characterises the urban transport system of Amman it is ‘congestion’. Al-Asad (2005) has lamented that since the 1990s Amman has “become a more congested city in which it is increasingly difficult to drive, and through which it is almost impossible to walk”.

Reflecting its uncontrolled and uncoordinated growth, the city does not have an integrated public transport system, although the government has recently established a network of yellow city buses. However, it

Conclusion: the growing geopolitical importance of AMMAN in the 21st century

The state of Jordan is playing an increasingly pivotal role both in the Middle East region and on the world stage, as part of the new geopolitical order born of the invasion of Iraq and the ‘Second Gulf War’. On the one hand, the state of Jordan has traditionally followed a pro-western foreign policy and has maintained close relations with both the United Sates of America and the United Kingdom. On the other hand, Jordan's peaceful and non-confrontational approach in respect of its neighbours,

Acknowledgements

The generous funding of the Leverhulme Trust of the Water, Life and Civilisation project at the University of Reading from 2005 to 2009 is gratefully acknowledged. The GIS Department of the Municipality of Amman kindly provided data on the distribution of residential land use types in the city. Kevin White helped with the analysis of the GIS data. Jane Burrell did a splendid job in preparing the final maps and diagrams from the preliminary roughs.

References (28)

N. Abu-Dayyeh
Persistent vision: plans for a modern Arab capital, Amman, 1955–2002
Planning Perspectives
(2004)
N. Abu-Dayyeh
Amman: le passé et l'avenir d'une capitals arabe moderne
Les Cahiers de L'Orient
(2004)
M. Al-Asad
Public transportation
Jordan Times
(2004)
M. Al-Asad
Cities of the Arab east
Jordan Times
(2004)
M. Al-Asad
Ever-growing Amman
Jordan Times
(2005)
S. Al Rawashdeh et al.
Satellite monitoring of urban spatial growth in the Amman area, Jordan
Journal of Urban Planning and Development
(2006)
Amman Municipality
Greater Amman comprehensive development plan 1985–2005
(1987)
R. Biegel
Urban development and the service and banking sector in a rentier-state
R. Bocco
Petites villes et citadinité en Jordani: quelques pistes de réflexion sur l'urbanisation en zone pastorale
(1986)
E.W. Burgess
The growth of the city

G. Chatelard et al.

The empire and the kingdom

(2006)

K. Darmame

Les enjeux de l'introduction du secteur privé dans la gestion de l'eau potable'

(2004)

GTZ et al.

National water master plan for Jordan

(2004)

A. Ham et al.

Jordan

(2003)

Cited by (70)

Climate change, the Arab spring, and COVID-19 - Impacts on landcover transformations in the Levant
2024, Journal of Arid Environments
The Levant is a climatically sensitive region that suffers from prolonged heat waves contributing to societal crisis and massive population displacements. At least since 2010 and the so-called Arab Spring, the region has experienced recurring socio-political turmoil and the Syrian civil war, which amplified economic and ecological pressure on the neighbouring countries. Particularly in Jordan, the strong population growth in addition to the immigration of hundreds of thousands Syrian refugees has led to massive changes in land-use and built-up infrastructure, resulting in an over-exploitation of the landscape through irrigated crop plantations and unregulated construction activities. Currently, the situation is further socio-politically fuelled by the so-called Palestinian-Israeli Conflict. The interplay of climate variability, built-up change, landcover transformation, and population development, however, is not yet fully understood. In this article, a multicomponent trend analysis from climate variables, satellite imagery, and landcover datasets is presented that highlights the strong increase in building activity over the past decades and emphasizes the interconnection of climate change prediction models and current socio-political development in the Levant. Groundwater exploitation for domestic use, crop production, and industrial purposes will further enhance social inequality, the pressure on the local ecological functionalities, and risks severe and irreversible land degradation.
Spatial transition dynamics of urbanization and Rohingya refugees’ settlements in Bangladesh
2023, Land Use Policy
Urbanization needs to conceptualize land use policy beyond the city boundaries. It might be explained by exploring complex and interconnected interdependencies in regional key driving factors that can have tele-coupling effects during sudden shocks. Over one million Rohingya have settled in the rural/forest area in Cox’s Bazar for locational proximity and comparatively easy escape from Myanmar after domestic conflicts. This study aims to explore the spatial dimension of urbanization in a regional transition context focusing on the newly built refugee settlements in the south-eastern coastal area of Bangladesh. Additional, we also identify further research scopes and gaps in the context of the case study. Analysis of openly available global data products from historical built-up expansion from 1975 to 2021 suggests that refugee settlements impact spatial development intensity (annual rate ⁓2.55 ha/year) and population density (annual rate ⁓9431 person/year) dimensions, which have a transition (rural-to-urban) of a greater regional scale than local urbanization. Our results from the expert-based key informant interviews have a broad agreement with the quantitative findings; however, the environmental: deforestation, economic: increasing business and employment opportunities and daily living expenses; and socio-cultural impacts: increasing conflict between host and refugee communities due to prostitution, drug dealing, and insecurity, are more local than findings from the geospatial analysis. Therefore, the local development policies need an urgent adjustment to comply with the local and regional balances in the above factors, along with that international development actors may also need attentive measures in the policy formulation. Further investigations in scenario-based urbanization dynamics are required to avoid an urban desert initiated in the absence or relocation of refugee settlement. Similar kinds of studies may also be replicated even in prosperous global North countries in order to conceptualize the spatial transformative process of rapid migration influx on urbanization with innovative open data in the absence of up-to-date official datasets and adoptions of mixed methods approaches with related actors including policymakers.
Improving the validity and credibility of the sociocultural valuation of ecosystem services in Amman, Jordan
2021, Ecological Economics
Notwithstanding the increased interest in, and development of, sociocultural valuation methods, the structure and replicability of these methods' procedures are critiqued. To overcome this, we develop a theoretical framework based on deliberation, local ecological knowledge, and quantified values that we operationalize by adapting a conventional Q-method (a mixed-methods research approach) into a deliberative process by combining it with the qualitative focus group method. We empirically test this method in Amman, Jordan by analyzing how local experts, based on their local ecological knowledge, value urban water features amid severe water scarcity. By weighing the local experts' competing values to better understand polarized and consensus views, our results reveal two juxtaposing opinions regarding the conception of Amman's urban surface waters. Decision makers can use these findings to set management priorities and/or make landscape/policy interventions that reduce the likelihood of stakeholder conflict. We also recommend that the Greater Amman Municipality should integrate nature-based solutions (e.g., stream daylighting) in future decision making to capitalize on urban ecosystem services, while maintaining a high degree of human health and safety (e.g., from climatic hazards). Deliberative Q-method is adaptable to different research topics seeking to understand social preferences amid complex urban realities and heterogeneous populations.
Deliberative Q-method: A combined method for understanding the ecological value of urban ecosystem services and disservices
2021, MethodsX
There is a need, in the ecosystem valuation literature to compliment the economic methods with sociocultural valuation methods that capture and facilitate a better understanding nuanced social and cultural values that are difficult to measure. Yet, sociocultural valuation methods are often critiqued for their lack of structured and replicable procedures and for often maintaining limited internal research validity. Accordingly, this paper demonstrates the development and application of a mixed-methods valuation approach to better recognize non-use social and cultural values by integrating the triad of deliberation, local ecological knowledge, and value quantification. We operationalized this method in Amman, Jordan where we analyzed how local experts value, based on their local ecological knowledge, the ecosystem services supplied by the City's urban water features (fountains, ponds, and streams).
- •
  We combine the conventional Q-method and focus group to yield a group deliberative Q-method.
- •
  The deliberative Q-method facilitates a structured valuation framework.
- •
  The deliberative Q-method method produces rich qualitative data.
- •
  The rigorous statistical analysis of deliberative Q-method improves internal validity and streamlines qualitative data coding.
- •
  The rigorous statistical analysis of deliberative Q-method weighs competing values to better understand polarized and consensus views.
Understanding hosting communities as a stakeholder in the provision of water and wastewater services to displaced persons
2020, Sustainable Cities and Society
In 2015, when German hosting communities had to accommodate more than 1.2 million displaced persons, they encountered multiple challenges with their built environment. The provision of infrastructure services to incoming displaced people may require changes to the existing infrastructure. As such, the provision of infrastructure services may elicit either support or opposition within hosting communities regarding the methods used to provide infrastructure services to displaced persons. This study assesses how hosting communities perceive various methods of providing water and wastewater infrastructure services to displaced persons; these methods are making (1) no changes, (2) temporary changes, or (3) permanent changes to the preexisting infrastructure. Statistical modeling and qualitative analysis were coupled to analyze data gathered from a survey deployed in 2016 to local German residents. The results suggest that the magnitude of displaced persons received by hosting communities, understood as a contextual factor, influenced hosting communities’ perceptions toward different categories of infrastructure alternatives. Qualitative analyses revealed that hosting communities do consider alternatives beyond physical changes, such as educating displaced people on using existing infrastructure. By understanding hosting communities’ perceptions of the provision of services to displaced people, decisionmakers and utility engineers may develop sustainable infrastructure alternatives with input from hosting communities.
Effect of typo-morphological analysis and place understanding on the nature of intervention within historic settings: the case of Amman, Jordan
2024, Archnet-IJAR: International Journal of Architectural Research

View all citing articles on Scopus

View full text

“Ever-growing Amman”, Jordan: Urban expansion, social polarisation and contemporary urban planning issues

Abstract

Section snippets

Introduction to Amman: a modern metropolis of geopolitical significance

The physical environment of the city

The development of Amman and the growth of its population: “ever-growing Amman”

The polarised social structure of Greater Amman

The industrial and employment structure of the city

Urban transport

Conclusion: the growing geopolitical importance of AMMAN in the 21st century

Acknowledgements

Persistent vision: plans for a modern Arab capital, Amman, 1955–2002

Planning Perspectives

Amman: le passé et l'avenir d'une capitals arabe moderne

Les Cahiers de L'Orient

Public transportation

Jordan Times

Cities of the Arab east

Jordan Times