| Interview with The Mayor of Amman |
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| Dedicated to Making Amman a Vibrant, Livable City |
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| Amman’s first municipal council was established in 1909. In 1914, the city of Amman was made the head of the Amman district. The city’s population at the time was only 1500-2000 people, but its economic activity soon made it larger. At 2.2 million persons today, the district accounts for 40% of Jordan’s population.
The Greater Amman Municipality (GAM) Building is located in the Amman City Center. It is surrounded by gardens, parks, and seating areas designed to grant citizens a space to enjoy their free time. GAM currently encompasses 18000 employees, users, and workers who, on their part, serve a population that covers a predicted area of 1700 km2. This area is divided into administrative within the Greater Amman Municipality number 27 in total, and are all geographically distributed. These regions are run by teams of qualified employees, while the managerial side of the Greater Amman Municipality is run by the Greater Amman Municipality Council, comprising 68 members, working within 14 committees, and headed by the Mayor of Amman.
The Municipality also encompasses several service departments. The employees within these departments work day and night to ensure that the Capital, the reflection of the heritage and cultural face of the Kingdom, boasts an air of development that is in line with modern times.
His Excellency Mayor Omar Maani was appointed by Royal Decree in April 2006 as Mayor of Amman. REAL had the chance to meet His Excellency at Cityscape Dubai 2009 and had the following interview with him.
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Amman is becoming one of the most important cities in the region when it comes to culture, business and tourism. What can you tell me about the phases Amman went through on its growth path?
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| Amman is quite intelligently positioning itself to become a regional center for commerce and culture, and in describing Jordan we say it is an “Open Air Museum”. Jordan is rich with many important landmarks, be it archeological sites or open spaces, and it enjoys a moderate climate. The efforts of the Greater Amman Municipality are to orient all their capabilities to make Amman a real vibrant and livable city. |
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Amman is growing fast. Can you break down the history of the city starting twenty years ago, and reaching until today?
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| Well, I will even go 100 years back. Amman is now celebrating the 100th establishment of the first municipality in Amman. The population of the city then was hardly 1000 people; now it is 2.5 million people. In the last 20 years, it has grown laterally in many different directions, sometimes even chaotically. The trend behind this growth was the availability of cheap land, where people would build in remote areas which lacked services. The municipality had to cater for these residents and introduce infrastructure services to them. This is what we call in urban planning “the phenomenon of urban sprawl”. This stretches the resources of the municipality and planners, and brings about disparity within communities. For the last three years, and under the direction of His Majesty King Abdullah Ibn Al Hussein, we have laid out a master plan that adequately addresses the issue of controlled growth. The theme of this master plan is intensification and densification, where one finds that the urban centers are well serviced. We couple between mobility/transport and land use. We thus create healthy urban spaces, which become meeting points for different segments of society. |
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The municipality is responsible for the development of Amman. How is such a big task accomplished? How do you administer that?
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| This is done through the organization. There are 25,000 people working in the municipality. A positive factor is that, in the last three years, and in addition to its traditional work, the municipality has changed the dynamics of human resources to maximize efficiency and openness through citizens’ center programs. I can comfortably say that we can cope easily with the challenges. What we have to equip ourselves with is a very well thought-of master plan that would be implemented gradually. |
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What projects are you implementing right now?
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| We are implementing hundreds of projects in public transport, urban regeneration programs, rehabilitation of downtown, land use programs, and are enacting new legislations that regulate building codes, etc. So, it is a wide spectrum of reforms that the new municipality is embarking on. |
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What did you display in Cityscape?
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| We have two main reasons for our presence in Cityscape. The first was to showcase Amman and to present it as a center of excellence in diverse ways. The second was to sell a series of enabling projects towards which we hope would solicit the interest of investors. Obviously, in the real estate market, the appetite for investment is down, so we have to provoke the interest of investors to engage them in projects like the Slaughter House, Convention Center, some projects in the old downtown, boutique hotels, and etc. |
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What incentives do you offer investors to encourage them to invest in such projects?
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| The investor is primarily interested in the viability of the project; its economic feasibility. These have been carried out for all the projects we are selling. Then, we have a series of investor-friendly laws that we implement. What is important is that Amman is geographically well-located and very safe, enjoying an abundance of qualified human resources. |
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What about the return on investments?
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| This is done by the investor.
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Despite being a public sector project?
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| In fact, the municipality works as a promoter and enabler of the projects. It channels them in a way so that supply and demand will correspond to each other. We have just published a report on the real estate market in Jordan which talks statistically about the background of the marketplace and how Amman would look like in the next 20 years. It is a valuable tool upon which can assist investors make decisions pertaining to investing in Amman. |
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How do you envision Amman in 20 or 30 years from now?
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| I think Amman is very unique in its topography, weather and the hospitality of its people. I think it is going to be friendlier and will maintain its ecologically habitable quality as it grows. It will have better mobility and an affordable public transportation system at the service of citizens and visitors alike. |
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