Fourteenth International Conference on The Constructed Environment

Abstract

In the last decades, nearly a century Amman witnessed a wide range of spatial formations and transformations. Changes came in form of emergence of diverse and variable urban spaces representing the accumulation of planning and urban design inconsistencies and incongruity. Mainly it is the result of layers growth and overlapping of urban typologies and regulations applied to the area. Diversity of regulations and urban typologies were the reflection of the spatial expansion caused by trends of modernity and migrations and population growth. Other transformation came from the nature of changes occurred in building and housing typologies, workability’s, usability and suitability of old infrastructures to modern uses and technologies, socioeconomic productivity and mobility. In an attempt to revive and upgrade certain old or new urban districts, Amman witnessed scattered and dispersed urban gentrification. Redevelopments came in a process of restoration and rehabilitation of certain parts streets or open urban spaces of the city. In cases, the whole project comprises of demolishing and rebuilding certain areas from scratch in other cases just minor works of restoring rehabilitating or refurbishing existing infrastructure. Exclusive gentrification scheme only serves the parts executed on. No benefits generated on Amman as a whole or even the district the project placed in. By utilizing the concept of urban acupuncture the paper presents practical solutions that help recognizing the generated urban regulatory errors. This concept helps by identifying and activating certain effective points of the nervous system of the energy flow in the body of the city.