Comments on: Amman Wins World Leadership Award

By: Amman, the city with a Plan - 360east | design, media, technology

Amman, the city with a Plan - 360east | design, media, technology — Tue, 13 May 2008 05:52:08 +0000

[…] The Amman Plan was developed by the global consulting firm BearingPoint and the Canada-based planning firm Planning Alliance. In December 2007, the plan won Amman the World Leadership Award. […]

By: Batir Wardam

Batir Wardam — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 08:18:04 +0000

As a continuation of Arabian Monkey’s comment, I sat down with Fadi Ghandour back in 2006 in an unrelated interview and the discussion drifted to combating rural poverty and he mentioned his project but was not aiming to build publicity out of it and kindly asked me not to write about it until an impact was done. He presented the results in the last WEF in the corporate responsibility session.

By: ArabianMonkey

ArabianMonkey — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 07:43:44 +0000

alurdunialhurr -

This neighborhood, Jabal Nathif, is the focus of a project spearheaded by ARAMEX and includes several private sector partners who collaborate with existing orgs in the neighborhood. MAANI are one of the corporate partners supporting this RUWWAD project in Nathif (and were at it before Eng Omar Maani was appointed Mayor).

RUWWAD have done a lot of work with the community there since this video which is fairly old - a year or so I think.

You should visit Jabal Nathif and see the beginnings of transformation, and of course how much more work needs to be done. But it’s started, and things are improving for the community as per their own testimonials.

Their website: http://www.ruwwad.net/home/

Having said all this, Nathif is one of many such neglected/forgotten areas in this city and around the country which need immediate action to enable their communities to exist in proper dignity and feel good about the space they live in.

By: Iqbal Rahman

Iqbal Rahman — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 06:20:01 +0000

Congratulations to Amman
This is a FYI note in appreciation of an ex collegue of ours Gerry Post. He was our Team Leader in the Bangladesh Environment Management Project (BEMP)
Gerry Post was the anchor person in preparing the
” The Dhaka Environment Programme — a one generation strategy to save the city from environmental catastrophe”
Now that he is a member of the winning Amman Team, we are very proud of him and can relate to his contribution.
The Dhaka Environment Programme did not get any international award but it has become one of the saviour document for the Dhaka city and its citizen is indebted to Gerry Post and his BEMP team.
Thank you Amman for proving that a regional city can do it.

By: alurdunialhurr

alurdunialhurr — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 17:24:02 +0000

يا ناس يا عالم،عن أي تخطيط تتحدثون؟أذا كنتم تشيرو الي عمان الغربيه وما حصل من دمار بيئي الي عبدون وديرغبار والمناطق المحيطه بها،فهذا ليس تخطيط وانما تدمير لما تبقا من أراضي كانت تعتبر من أخصب وأحسن المناطق لزراعه الاشجار الحرجيه والمثمره،ليس هناك تخطيط لمدينه عمان وانما تدمير بجمله لما تبقا من مساحات هائله من الاأرضي ،لا يمكن ان تحصل اي “تنميه” بدون أخد في الحسبان تطوير وتحسين وحمايه البيئه
Watch a short documentary about planing of Amman and how people live on the other side.

By: ArabianMonkey

ArabianMonkey — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 17:14:55 +0000

The GAM may be trying hard, the Mayor may be cool and gets it, has a few good people around him who have invested good effort and resources into the planning. But like most of our challenges, what we plan for and what (if) is implemented are many times quite different. We also dont truly look at people behavior and customize accordingly - I really find a huge disconnect between the physical structure of this city and how people behave, or need to live.

A dear, departed friend once said, “what we aspire for and what we are are two different things.”

I blogged this angrily back on Sept 12:
….We are amazing at vision, headlines, mandates, initiatives and business plans endorsed by the best advisers and consultants money can buy. We suck at implementation. We suck at continuity. We suck at evaluation. We suck at revision. We suck at reflection. We suck at accountability…..

And although back then I was referring to our broadcast fiasco (which remains unresolved and worsening), I guess it applies to more than that.

At the end of the day, a dream remains a dream and a plan remains a plan until hard, determined work goes into the implementation.

By: Ahmad Al-Sholi

Ahmad Al-Sholi — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 15:40:20 +0000

The GAM under Maani’s management surely had value in development scope. However, they inherited many BIG mistakes from before, like abdali implementation, Jordan gate details, ghamadan forest usage, destroyed/non-maintained infrastructure.. I ve been looking into announcements of the master plan and its headlines, yet no official document i found, waiting for the full release after the fifth announcement. Does anyone know where to find any detailed document in that regard?

By: Awartany

Awartany — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 14:12:15 +0000

Well, that is great news! It’s noticed and highly appreciated that GAM is doing a hard work -focused on traffic- to solve many issues.

Planning is a good thing, implementing or at least trying to implement is greater. No one can deny the fact that many things started to get better, there are efforts.

Won’t be proud of anything more than seeing our Arab world free and on top…