Amman's Growth

I've been trying to learn more about the history of public transportation in Amman. One of the incredible things about the city is how much growth its seen in the last sixty years. That short time-span means that there are Ammanis who remember a time when you knew everyone in the city. The idea of knowing everyone in a city seems like an exaggerated claim, but not too-long ago Amman was the size of a small town.

 Shared-taxis were the first major form of public transportation. In the 50s and early 60s, shared-taxis were all that were needed, as much of the population of Amman was centered around just a few hills in what is now considered the center of a much larger city. The valleys between the hills form a natural place for meeting and bazaars, and a cheap, shared taxi ride was, and still is, a great way of getting back up those hills rather than putting in the leg-work to hoof it back up the hill.

Amman has seen massive increase in the number of people who live in the city or commute in. While many countries have high birth rates, Jordan adds to that its history of being a haven for people fleeing conflict. The major waves of of Palestinian refugees who came in '48 and '67 more than doubled the size of the country, and the successive influxes of Iraqis in the First and Second Gulf Wars and now Syrians have done its part to grow the city into the burgeoning metropolis that it is today.

This population growth is one of the reasons that city planners and officials point towards as an excuse for why city services like public transportation have lagged behind where they should be for a city this size. Bracketing the question of whether or not it serves as an excuse, the huge, immigration-fueled population boom presents a host of challenges. I wish a could delve more into the topic, but I don't think I have the time or knowledge to do it justice at the moment. Instead, here is an image showing the growth of Amman from 1918-2002. I couldn't find a good visualization of Amman's growth up until the present, so we'll have to make a visual guess as to how much more the city's grown in the last 13 years.

Source: Rawashdeh and Saleh, "Satellite Monitoring of Urban Spatial Growth in the Amman Area, Jordan"