إن النص العربي الأصلي لهذ الحوار الذي ظهر في موقع حبر تحت عنوان
نحو مدينة لكل سكّانها: كيف نعيد التفكير في تخطيط عمّان؟
حوار مع المهندس والمؤرخ المعماري محمد شجاع الأسد حول تحديات الإدارة الحضرية لعمان
متوفر من خلال الرابط التالي
This is an English translation of the original Arabic language publication of this conversation, which appeared in 7iber.com, and is available through the following URL:
Photo by Mohammad al-Asad
Towards a city for all its inhabitants: How do we rethink Amman’s planning?
Interview with architect and historian Mohammad Shuja’ Al-Asad on the challenges relating to the urban management of Amman
January 29, 2025
Khaled Bashir
Late last year, a World Bank report on the problems of urban planning in Amman and its future was released. The report, “Amman of the Future at a Pivotal Turn: Three Strategies for Climate-Sparing Space Transitions,” notes rising inequality between Amman’s neighborhoods in terms of access to education, sanitation, and green spaces, thus reopening long-standing debates about the structural inequality that the city’s planning imposes among its residents.
We proceed from this report to talk with the architect and historian Mohammad Shuja’ Al-Asad, the founding director of the Center for the Study of the Built Environment (CSBE), about urban justice in Amman, and the most important urban challenges it faces, including those relating to administrative issues, representation, mobility, public spaces, land-use planning, and waste management, pausing to analyze concepts that have become dominant and often repeated in the prevailing urban discourse, as with the “smart city” and the “New City” project.
Mohammad Shuja’ al-Asad studied architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign, and history of architecture at Harvard University before holding postdoctoral research positions at Harvard and at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. He taught at Harvard, Princeton University, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, The University of Illinois, The University of Jordan, and The German Jordanian University. He was a technical reviewer for numerous cycles for the Aga Khan Award for Architecture starting in 1989, and he then served as a member of the Award's Steering Committee, from 2010 to 2019. He also has been a member of the boards of directors of several Jordanian cultural organizations and committees including the Jordan Museum, the Royal Society of Fine Arts, and the Amman Commission. He has published several books and articles in Arabic and English on the built environment in the lands of Islam, and he wrote a series of over 130 articles on architecture and urban planning entitled "Urban Crossroads," which first appeared in 2004 and continued until the end of 2014. Many of these addressed urban issues in Amman, and most of them appeared in the Jordan Times.
Khaled Bashir: Dr. Mohammed, I will start with the management challenge for Amman. You wrote in 2011 an article that caused an uproar, and you said in it that 24 years after the founding of the Greater Amman Municipality (GAM), it has become necessary to return to the old administrative divisions of Amman, before the creation of (GAM) in 1987. Is that still your opinion?
Yes, I had written an article published in 2011 calling for a return to the divisions of municipalities that existed before the establishment of the Greater Amman Municipality (GAM) in 1987, when Amman consisted of the municipality of Amman in the downtown area and the surrounding hills / mountains, and was bordered by a group of independent municipalities such as those of Wadi al-Sir, Sweileh, Jubaihah, and Quwaismah, among others. I believe that a return to the division of municipalities as it was before the 1987 merger will contribute effectively to dealing with several challenges currently facing Amman. Accordingly, the greater Amman area would consist of a group of independent municipalities, each with an elected mayor and municipal council. Of course, these municipalities will need to coordinate with each other regarding services that extend beyond the borders of one municipality - such as public transportation - through one or more institutions that would operate at the level of the greater Amman region.
One of the reasons for the establishment of GAM in 1987 was that the administration of the municipality of Amman at that time functioned at a considerably higher qualitative level than that of the municipalities surrounding it, and which had become organically linked to it. These municipalities lacked an acceptable degree of institutionalization, and personal relationships took on a big role in determining how they were managed. But the situation is different today, and the level of management and services in these areas has improved since the merger, while it has declined in the area of the original Amman municipality due to a number of factors including the overwhelming growth of the bureaucratic apparatus responsible for managing the city, and the even larger expansion of the responsibilities that this apparatus has had to take on.
In my opinion, we find today acceptable levels of awareness, experience, and implementation capacities in the municipal bodies responsible for these suburbs and municipalities. I believe that what will happen if the greater Amman region is restructured in a manner that is similar to how it was before the merger is that the municipalities will learn from each other and compete with each other in attracting residents, establishments, and investments, as well as providing decent municipal services. Therefore, if the independent municipality of Sweileh, for example, develops high-quality sidewalks and public gardens, or facilitates certain bureaucratic transactions for its residents and businesses, this will encourage other municipalities such as Wadi al-Sir or Jubaihah to do the same – and even go beyond what Sweileh is offering – in order to keep up with it and to compete with it, and so on …
The return to the independence of the municipalities surrounding Amman of course will not be easy at first. It will require adapting to a new situation and a radical overhaul of what has existence since 1987, but I expect that, with time, the results will be for the better.
Another management-related challenge you referred to in your articles is that of representation. Why do you consider it a challenge in Amman, and how does it relate to city management?
In the event of a return to the previous municipal divisions, residents will be able to form better connections with and knowledge of their representatives in their municipalities. Of course, Amman still faces challenges related to creating a sense of community in its neighborhoods, as well as developing more effective systems of representation for its residents in the city’s municipal structure. In this regard, the vast majority of the residents of Amman do not even know who the city council member representing them is. We moreover do not know exactly what the members of the Amman City Council do in terms of working to improve the quality of urban life in the areas they represent, and we are not aware of them communicating with the residents of the areas they represent.
This situation is reflected in the low percentage of voter turnout in municipal elections, particularly for the Amman City Council. As I recall, it was only about ten percent of Amman’s eligible voters in the last election. Thus, any candidate can be elected by a relatively small number of votes, that is without representing a meaningful segment of the population of the district in which s/he is running. In contrast, I remember, for example, when I lived abroad, how the member of the municipal council representing the neighborhood and the district in which I lived held an open meeting with the residents of the neighborhood every month in the neighborhood’s community center.
You address in your articles the challenge of mobility and movement in the city, which is also addressed in the World Bank report. The report provides figures on the time required to get to work, which reflects on the disparity regarding the level of urban justice in the city. For example, the report notes that residents of the poorest neighborhoods in Amman spend twice as much time getting to work in comparison to residents of more affluent neighborhoods. How can we describe this challenge in Amman? And how is it related to urban justice?
I have seen the statistics in the report and have found them useful. The ability to access the different places we use in the city is a form of urban equity. Therefore, if a person does not have access to places associated with work, education, health services, shopping, entertainment, etc., this is a kind of disenfranchisement, and this person as a result suffers from a degree of marginalization and urban discrimination towards him / her.
I grew up in Amman when we referred to it a “big town,” and both my mother and father lovingly remembered the Amman of their childhood during the 1930s, when it was a town inhabited by only a few thousand residents. But Amman today is a city and an urban center in every sense of the word, not only because of its size and population, but also because it now offers everything that we expect from a city. In terms of cultural activities, for example, Amman regularly provides a rich variety of lectures, seminars, and exhibitions. Commercially, and in terms of consumerism, we generally find in Amman everything that one may want or need. Amman’s restaurants, for example, today compete with the restaurants of any city in the world in terms of quality as well as the variety of cuisines and tastes they offer.
But Amman also suffers from many challenges at the urban level. Among the most important of these challenges is that of movement and mobility, whether via private vehicles, public transportation, or on foot. For example, although the area where I live (al-Rawabi Neighborhood) is centrally located along several major traffic arteries, it is not served by an effective and well-functioning public transportation network. Also, although there are many shops and establishments that I can use and that are located within a ten-minute walk from my home, I do not walk to them because a pedestrian infrastructure for my area still does not exist. The sidewalks are not suitable for walking in terms of their design and implementation. Accordingly, crossing the streets that separate me from these shops and facilities is difficult and dangerous because of the rapid and heavy movement of vehicles in them, and the lack of provisions for the movement of pedestrians across them.
Here, I adopt a simple and widespread urban standard in assessing the level of life in the city in terms of movement and mobility. It consists of making an initial inventory of the services and facilities located within the circumference of a circle of which its center is one’s residence and that has a radius of about one kilometer. This represents of a distance that the average person can walk within the span of about ten to fifteen minutes. The results of this exercise are encouraging for many areas in Amman, including the area where I live. What negates this positive result is that access to these services and facilities is difficult and dangerous due to the lack of pedestrian infrastructure, and the difficulty and danger of crossing many streets due to the dense and fast traffic characterizing them.
Despite these challenges, it must be noted that an important qualitative positive development has taken place in Amman in this regard over the past few years, which is the completion and operation of the two lines of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system in the city and the third line linking Amman and Zarqa, although the system was only implemented after many delays. The network seems to be working efficiently and is well received by its users. This is a major achievement that cannot and should not be underestimated. It is a necessary first step in dealing seriously with the challenges of mobility in Amman. The hope is that this achievement will be followed by other ones.
The World Bank report mentions the term “smart city,” which has recently been repeated in the urban discourse about Amman. Moreover, a news item recently appeared regarding a rise in Amman’s ranking on this indicator. What do you think of this term in the context of talking about urban governance of Amman?
Let me answer this question by first reviewing the nature of the narrative that GAM has presented to its residents during the past thirty years or so, based on my observations regarding it. This public discourse has undergone significant changes over this period. Between 1990 and 2010, GAM carried out large and ambitious construction projects. These included a series of tunnels and bridges that aimed to facilitate the flow of traffic in the city, and the construction of several buildings, gardens / parks, open spaces, and public squares, such as the GAM buildings complex in Ras al-‘Ayn, al-Hussein Gardens, Culture Street, and the rehabilitation of Rainbow Street, among others.
These projects were highly ambitious in terms of size and intentions, and they can be viewed as part of a process aimed at creating visual urban landmarks and icons in the city. But the role of those who would benefit from these projects and those affected by them from among the residents of Amman, whether in the conception, implementation, or management of these projects, was limited, if not non-existent. The focus seems to have been on creating these projects, but little thought was given to their use, management, and maintenance.
As for the public discourse that GAM provided during this period, I clearly remember how the announcements that GAM put out to the media about these projects reflected great confidence and pride, and how these projects, especially those related to traffic management, were presented as remarkable engineering achievements. But by the end of the first decade of the new century, and in conjunction with the regional developments and repercussions that had ravaged the region in the early 2000s, this phase of creating monuments and icons largely slowed down, and it then came to a halt. This coincided with the end of the construction boom that Amman experienced roughly between 2005 and 2010, and the onset of a period of noticeable and even severe slowdown in construction activities that we are still experiencing. Because of this slowdown, GAM no longer had the abundant financial resources that were available to it in previous years, as clearly shown in its 2010 and 2011 financial statements. GAM accordingly began to pursue highly conservative spending policies in comparison to the previous two decades. We still see expressions of the end of this boom in manifestations such as the suspension of work on the two massive high-rises at the Sixth Circle (although it should be noted that GAM announced a few months ago that work on them will resume), and the cessation of work on the Amman Wall high-rise project along Wadi Saqra Street, on which construction work had not gone beyond foundation work.
This downturn was accompanied by a change in the nature of GAM’s public discourse. We begin to come across a more modest discourse that focuses less on presenting achievements, and more on seeking to improve the services provided to the residents of the city, to communicate with them, and to better respond to their complaints. This new discourse also included a focus on developing Amman into a “green” and a “smart” city.
Here, and back to your question, I find that the concept of Amman being a smart city is still in a pre-implementation phase. My understanding of a smart city is one where we experience an extensive collection, analysis, and implementation of relevant data by adopting the latest developments in information technology. This means, for example, the use of censors that function continuously and in real time to track the movement of pedestrians and their crossing of streets in areas that pedestrians use intensively. This also include sensors that monitor the speed at which neighborhood solid waste containers in different location are being filled in order to reach optimal solutions regarding when to empty them and where to locate them. Sensors also can be used to track the movement of water in certain locations after rainfall to prevent flooding. A “smart” city is also one where residents can easily and immediately submit their observations to the responsible authorities (e.g. via one’s smartphone) about a particular occurrence or phenomenon that requires follow up by GAM Staff. In contrast, being able to make online payments or carry out certain transactions online (which require extensive improvements in their current situation) are not enough on their own to describe a city as “smart.”
But while this change in discourse by GAM that I have described has not had much of an impact on practice so far, I am optimistic that this will gradually happen. I have noticed from personal experience that changes in practice are usually preceded or accompanied by changes in the prevalent discourse, as it is natural that changes in discourse will eventually seep to affect and influence practice. It seems to me that we are now witnessing the beginnings of this impact on practice in some of what GAM is carrying out on the ground.
Speaking of this slowdown that Amman experienced at the level of construction projects, can it be said that this was accompanied by a general slowdown in the overall growth of the city? And how did that affect its planning and management? Have these changes been positive or negative?
Yes, you could say that. In my opinion, I do not think that Amman has undergone dramatic urban developments since the end of the great urban boom that the city witnessed between 2005 and 2010. Overall economic growth during this period has slowed in Jordan, as statistics show. Specifically, if we look at the city’s real estate market, which is closely linked to urbanization, and through which considerable wealth was created over the past decades, we will notice that its performance has been weak over the past few years.
It should be noted here that this slowdown in overall economic growth also applies, though to a lesser extent, to population growth in Amman and in Jordan. The population is still growing, but at a lower rate than before. In this context, a few weeks ago I came across an interesting media news story indicating that fertility rates in Jordan currently stand at about 2.7 children per woman. (I also came across another source that specifies the number at 2.6). This is a significant decrease in relation to where this indicator was in 1990, or a generation ago, when it was 5.6. The fertility rate needed to achieve full population replacement from one generation to the next is about 2.1. This means, and as expected, that Jordan is gradually but clearly moving towards fertility rates similar to those we currently find in industrialized countries, and that we will face negative fertility rates in a few years. This also means that steady population growth may not remain a challenge that we have to deal with.
Of course, many will point out that Amman’s growth since around the mid-20th century has been largely driven by migration, namely forced migration. Here, it should be noted that Jordan has dealt with a large wave of forced migration during the past fifteen years or so, which is the migration of Syrians because of the harrowing circumstances they had faced in their country, but this migration has primarily affected the areas of northern Jordan, while its impact on Amman has been relatively limited.
In my opinion, periods of slow economic and demographic growth - despite the economic challenges that may accompany them – have positive consequences. They give the authorities in charge of the city some breathing space, and allow them, at least to some extent, to focus their efforts on improving the performance of the city and the level of services provided to its residents instead of trying to keep pace with its growth. But that doesn’t seem to have happened during the slowdown in growth that has characterized Amman over the last fifteen years, as evident in the state of issues such as waste management, parking, and traffic congestion, among others.
The World Bank report addressed zoning regulations and land-use management in Amman. Do you think this is an important challenge for the city? And how can one rethink it in the case of Amman?
Yes, zoning and land-use regulations and management in Amman need to be rethought. One of the organizational ideas that must be adopted more broadly is the idea of mixed-use zoning, but in a thoughtful manner, of course. Examples of this include buildings where the ground floor is zoned as commercial space and the upper floors are zoned residential units, with floors located between the two zoned as offices when possible. A similar arrangement was widespread in Amman, especially around the middle of the last century. 1
Such arrangements provide a degree of spatial proximity in the city. Places of work, study, shopping, housing, … etc. become relatively close to each other. This facilitates mobility in the city. We of course need to rethink this type of multi-use buildings and to make it suitable for Amman today with its expansive overall area and population. We also need to address the challenges that result from this kind of proximity due to increasing population densities in different areas of the city. These challenges include rising levels of noise and of the generation of waste; addressing parking needs considering that the number of vehicles will increase drastically in relation to available parking spaces; and providing open green public spaces, particularly when considering that private green spaces are constantly dwindling. Here, the principle of “no harm, whether intentionally or accidentally” that historically was adopted in the cities of the lands of Islam can be applied.
In this context, it should also be noted that although we need higher degrees of spatial proximity and population densities, we so far have not adapted to living in apartments – which are characterized by high housing densities – as an effective and suitable housing arrangement, although most of Amman’s housing today consists of apartments. Many of the city’s apartment buildings suffer from problems in terms of the quality of life they offer as related to waste management, the provision of parking, noise control, as well as the maintenance and cleanliness of common areas, not to mention the lack of sense of connection between their residents. Therefore, there is a need in Amman to rethink how apartment buildings can be managed, especially from a legal point of view, in order to guarantee that all their residents fulfill their responsibilities towards their apartment buildings and to their neighbors living in them. 2
But some might ask: Why do should we think about increasing population densities?
In addition to what I mentioned earlier regarding the issue of spatial proximity and its importance in the city, we have to take into account that low-density residential communities are highly inefficient. They extend horizontally and eat up expansive areas, and this places significant pressure on infrastructure networks, including those connected to roads, water, sewage, electricity, and communications. Sprawling areas, which result from low densities, also are characterized by a higher dependence on private vehicles, which also results in high fuel consumption and pollution. Low densities also means that various facilities, whether commercial, educational, health, religious, government, recreational, and others, will be far from many of their users, since in order for these facilities to be feasible, they need to serve a minimum number of beneficiaries, but these beneficiaries will be scattered across large areas. This means that these beneficiaries will have to travel longer distances and to spend more time in order to reach these facilities. Moreover, public transportation services in areas with low density cannot be provided with any degree of efficiency, as these services will not be economically feasible unless there are enough users for a given public transportation line, and this cannot be achieved in cases of low density.
In contrast, the presence of high population densities, i.e. the accumulation of larger populations within smaller areas, facilitates the provision of all the above. Often, high densities also allow access to various facilities and services on foot. Raising population densities is in fact one of the recommendations mentioned in the World Bank report that you mentioned earlier.
Speaking of parks and public spaces, the lack of these spaces is known, but what suggestions may be made about them within the logic of “rethinking” that you present?
Of course, parks and open green public areas are very few in Amman, whether in terms of their distribution or in terms of the average public green area available to each of the city’s residents, and according to any criteria we may adopt. But there are some positive initiatives. For example, A small garden, the Eastern Umm al-Summaq Park, was inaugurated in my neighborhood about two years ago. It is certainly a good addition to the neighborhood. It seems successful in terms of its popularity among the neighborhood’s residents, and it is well kept by GAM. In terms of rethinking the role of such a park and how to use it, in my opinion, the park can be more than just a place to which the residents of the neighborhood come for leisure and entertainment. Community initiatives and activities for the residents of the neighborhood can be carried out in the park, whether they are of an educational, training, or recreational nature, and these may be developed and implemented by teams of educators and social workers. This gives GAM the opportunity to take on a deeper and more positive role in the lives of the city’s residents, as is the case, for example with Zaha Center, but with a greater focus on serving the neighborhood level rather than the city as a whole as is the case with Zaha Center.
Such activities will help the residents of the neighborhood better know each other and develop more positive relationships and ties between them. It seems, however, that GAM still focuses on carrying out its activities and projects on the city level in general - whether in interventions relating to traffic, parks, or cultural centers - much more than focusing on the local neighborhood level.
Let us end this conversation by talking with the “New City,” or “New Amman,” a term that has been repeated in recent years. What do you think of the idea?
I am not a fan of the idea of new cities, based on historical experiences relating to them. There are numerous new cities across history that were unsuccessful. For example, the 9th-century ‘Abbasid city of Samarra was abandoned to a large extent and shrank into a town less than sixty years after its founding. There is also the city of Sultaniyyah in Iran, which was founded during the 14th century, but began to decline about a hundred years after its founding. The success of a new city is not guaranteed. I moreover view the idea of a new city that is presented as even a partial alternative to an existing one as an example of “escaping forward.” There is no existing city that cannot be repaired and developed in a suitable manner. There are many cities that are hundreds or even thousands of years old that remain successful and even outstanding urban centers. Improving what exists is preferable in terms of making the best out of available resources than starting from scratch.
One reason that may prevent the success of a new city is its lack of “social capital,” which refers to the social and economic relations that gradually evolve among the inhabitants of a given area. In this context, the residents of a neighborhood get to know each other better with time; friendships are formed between neighbors; the shopkeeper, the barber, and the tailor develop a base of customers, who know them and whom they know; the children of the neighborhood play with each other, and so on. But when we move the population of a given area all at once to new places for them to live in, this results in the destruction of that social capital that existed in the area they left behind, and a social capital can only evolve in the new places after long periods.
In this context, I present in several courses that I teach examples of urban projects that have won the Aga Khan Award for Architecture such as the Kampung Improvement Program in Jakarta, Indonesia. Kampung is the term used in Indonesia for informal settlements. Work on this project began in the late 1960s and lasted for several decades. The conventional solution to informal settlements is usually to demolish them, build new building complexes in different locations, and move the population there. But many of these projects soon fail because they destroy the existing social capital that existed in the areas where the displaced population used to live. In the case of this project, those in charge of it dealt with the challenges facing informal settlement in a novel way. They began by consulting with the local population regarding their needs and aspirations. They then ensured the residents that they would be able to remain in their homes by giving each family an official land title for the land on which their home is located. In doing so, they dispelled fears among the dwellers of these informal settlements that they would be displaced from their homes since they did not previously own the land on which their houses are located. What the authorities did then was to improve the public services available to them. They accordingly ensured that every house is located near a paved street or a paved alleyway. They installed public water taps that delivered potable water to each cluster of houses since potable water did not reach the houses in the past. There also were no toilets then in the houses of these neighborhoods, so the authorities built shared bathrooms for each group of adjacent houses. Canals were also built to drain rainwater. Schools and health centers were established and situated within walking distance for the residents.
As a result of all this, the social capital in these neighborhoods was preserved, and none of the inhabitants had to leave their homes. The project did not involve providing any direct financial support to the residents. But what has happened is that, over time, once the residents secured ownership of the land on which their homes are located, and once they were provided with basic public services, they began to improve their homes at their own expense. They also cooperated with each other so that each of them cleaned and preserved the segment of the street located in front of their homes and shops. All this took place because they began to feel a sense of ownership of their houses and neighborhoods, and they started feeling a strong connection to them.
I mention this example to suggest that if it has been possible to upgrade these informal settlements, which suffered from numerous serious challenges, in such an effective manner, then it is certainly possible to solve any challenges facing a city like Amman. I believe that we should focus on this, and there is no need to build a new city. Certainly, there are serious challenges facing Amman, some of which are related to the manner in which city is administered and the lack of institutional representation among its population; to the absence of a sense of a cohesive local community in many of its neighborhoods; to land-use regulations; and to the scarcity of parks and open green public spaces. All these shortcomings, however, can be resolved effectively through the currently available material and human resources.
Notes:
1. A good example of this arrangement is al-Kabariti Building (known today as al-Kabariti Village) in the 1st Circle Area of the Jabal Amman district of Amman that dates to around 1950. Its ground floor level consists of commercial facilities, and it upper levels consist of residential apartments. It is considered Amman’s first residential apartment building.
2. This may be accomplished by establishing an association for the management of each building that consists of its residents, as is common in apartment buildings in numerous parts of the world. The association would be officially registered, would follow specific financial protocols, and would manage a reserve fund for emergencies, maintenance, and follow up. The residents of the building would sustain the fund through the dues they pay. The residents may also select, through this association, a property management firm to manage the building.