Concretising land use planning: Adapt laws, involve landowners, set standards

Under the general title Sustainable and resilient, regional and inter-municipal land management: Challenges and opportunities for growing urban and regional centers the cooperation project between the Planning Department of the Greater Amman Municipality and the German Cities of Frankfurt, Munich and Berlin aimed at developing an Exemplary community development planning scheme for Al Dafyaneh (Tareq B) in the northwest of Amman.

In a first stage the general conditions of municipal planning have been explored and compared. This concerned both planning laws and building codes and in particular provisions for land readjustment. The latter being of imminent importance for urban planning in Jordan / Amman, since heritage law result in highly split-up landownership.

The first stage of the learning process ended in December 2021 and was completed with recommendations on legislative changes to strengthen the Amman City Council vis-à-vis the landowners. Rainer Müller-Jökel (former head of the Surveying Office of the City of Frankfurt) and Gerhard Gross (former project manager in the Department of Urban Development Planning in the Office for Urban and Regional Planning of the City of Munich) wrote an official letter to the government in Amman.