Halfway down the Danube

Amman

I haven't described Amman yet, have I.

Sprawling, low-rise city. Very few large buildings, so the city just goes on and on.

The dominant color is white. Cream, with accents of bone and pale grey. Amman sits on a plateau of white limestone and that's what the city is built of. Sorry, Belgrade -- this is the whitest city I've ever seen.

It's hot and dusty. Later in the summer, I'm told, it gets hotter and dustier. (On the other hand, it has pleasantly cool winters -- snow is not unheard of.)

There's not a lot of architecture. Blocks and more blocks.

The road system is insane. There are no boulevards, no big plazas or squares. There are some large fast roads, but they sort of wind through the city randomly. There's no grid, no hint of order.

I have come to dislike top-down city plans. They're usually imposed by assholes, and the results -- especially in the 20th century -- were often horrendous. But here in Amman, I'm getting a look at what happens when there's no urban design or planning at all. That's not so great either.

Oh: no parks. I mean, like, none. It's the least green city I've ever seen.

In the first generation after independence -- the 1950s and '60s, when the city was maybe a quarter of its present size -- there was a fad for low-slung ranch-style vaguely Frank Lloyd Wright-ish houses. These seem to be where the wealthy Ammanites live today; they usually have high fences and gates.

Amman is growing at a furious clip, fueled by the steady flow of refugees from Iraq. An estimated 700,000 Iraqis have come to Jordan in the last four years. That group is heterogeneous, but includes a disproportionate number of upper- and middle-class Iraqis, members of the Sunni administrative and professional classes. These people have bid up the price of land and apartments and are contributing to a construction boom. Nobody knows the current population of Amman, but estimates run as high as 2 million. That seems high, but it's obviously growing very quickly. I can hear jackhammers right now from across the street.

Jordanians grumble about traffic. I don't see it, myself -- Yerevan is much worse. There are a fair number of cars with Iraqi license plates around.

About 90% of the women are wearing headscarves, but there's a significant minority who don't. Some of these may from Jordan's small Christian minority, but apparently most are just liberals. I'm told that there are parts of Jordan where this would be unacceptable, but in Amman it doesn't turn any heads.

There are two big Safeway supermarkets, a McDonalds, a Pizza Hut and a Starbucks. The local food is good enough that I really wonder why anyone goes there, but then there are Pizza Huts in Singapore and Paris and Rome, so go figure.

It's not a great city for walking. I did get a really good haircut, though -- the first one I've liked since leaving Romania. The barber had the oddest method of removing extra hair... worked, though.

Questions about Amman?

Posted by douglas at May 31, 2007 10:59 AM