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Investigating youth participation in urban planning in Jordan

Featured Image: Tareq Khalaf photography

The MENA region (The Middle East and North Africa) accommodates the youngest population in the world. In fact, youth aged 15-24 years account for approximately 25% of its population (Morton and Montgomery, 2012). Arguably, Arab youth has spearheaded the recent political movements across the MENA region under the Arab Spring movement (Jamal, 2012). These dramatic revolutions have resulted in the ousting of a number of dictatorship regimes, or at least, the mitigation of authoritarian practices, consider Jordan for instance. Nonetheless, Arab youth has a minimal impact on the development practice at the local, regional, and national levels.

The issue of weak participation among Arab youth is worrisome and deserves further scrutiny. Youth are fully-fledged members of society, and their participation enables them to exercise their rights and build a more vivid democracy. Given the paucity of relevant academic research, urban planners and policymakers lack reliable evidence on which to base their youth engagement strategies in urban planning. Accordingly, I have undertaken a PhD research (at Heriot Watt University, Edinburgh. UK) to fill this knowledge gap and help answer the question of “How can the quality of urban development planning in Amman be improved by greater engagement of youth?”

In this article I briefly go through the main impediments I have found on engaging youth in the Jordanian urban planning system. This article is split into four parts; the first part introduces the city of Amman. This is followed by a discussion on collaborative planning, followed by a briefly discussion of the main impediments to engaging youth in the Jordanian context. The article concludes with suggestions proposed for greater youth involvement in Jordanian urban planning.

Amman: the city of many hats

Amman, the capital of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan (hereafter referred to as Jordan), with its first urban settlement dating back to between the Palaeolithic and Neolithic ages (7000- 4000 B.C.E), has 4 million inhabitants (42 per cent of the population of Jordan). The idiom of ‘the city of many hats’ alludes to the heterogeneous composition of the city. Amman has witnessed accelerated urbanisation as a direct consequence of the influx of refugees and rural-urban immigration.

However, the absence of a clear and inclusive master plan for Amman has spawned unsustainable urban growth, and subsequently tarnished the image of the city. This is demonstrated in the urban encroachment over the agriculture land, social polarisation and environmental issues. In May 2006, under the directives of His Majesty King Abdullah II, the Greater Municipality of Amman (henceforth GAM) embarked on a new planning and development project for Amman. The project aimed to envisage the urban future of Amman until 2025. Arguably, Amman 2025 challenged urban planning practice and brought a radical shift in the way urban planning is crafted in Jordan. The Amman at the time, Mayor Omar Maani, initiated a series of communication and debate forums to engage key stakeholders from the three main spheres of the society: the state, the market and civil society.

Collaborative urban planning

In the late 19th century, decision-making in planning became a more ‘Intercommunicative’ endeavour between key stakeholders in society (Healey, 1997). In this, a diversity of voices and multiplicities of opinions are integrated for the common good. Smith and Jenkins, 2015 noted the importance of collaborative planning to deal with the complexity of a rapidly urbanising city. Smith and Jenkins (2015) also note that weak institutional capacity is one of the major barriers for inclusive decision-making. Institutional capacity is the ability of the urban governance structure within a specific context to engage a variety of stakeholders “to get involved in policy processes and decision-making processes (Polk, 2011). In this vein, I have examined the chosen case study Amman (2025) building on Healey’s (2006) institutional capacity framework (see Table 1 below). Consequently, I will be able to identify the relationships between key actors, their capacities and interests.

Table 1: The dimensions of institutional capacity building (Healey, 2006 p.93) Knowledge resource Relational resource Mobilisation capacity

Researching opportunities to participate

Aiming to study whether the institutional context of urban governance in Amman acknowledges the right of youth to participate, I conducted qualitative research. From June 2015 to August 2015, I carried out in-depth interviews with a variety of people involved with Amman’s body of governance. For example, I spoke to academic, professional and public figures in Jordan, and held focus groups with a range of young inhabitants of Amman.

Most importantly and for the focus of my research, limited opportunities have been found for youth to participate in land–use planning in Amman. The project Amman 2025 in fact offered superficial and limited opportunities for youth participation, in the sense that young people are often included in one-off discussions, as a tokenistic form of engagement. My study has uncovered a number of predisposing conditions which hampered the youth to have an eminent role in the making of Amman 2025. So what where the most prominent obstacles within the political and cultural context of Amman?

Political system

One of the key findings from analysing the Jordanian context is that the political system is neither sufficiently listening to youth groups nor sufficiently representing them. This is epitomized in the inertia of the legal framework for land-use planning to innervate youth engagement.

Following the political instability in the Middle East, civil society in Jordan has unabatedly grown, with a variety of activities and interests. This is clearly demonstrated in the confrontation between political party leaders and independent activists with central government (Schwedler, 2012) over issues of political grievance, social justice and public administrative corruption. Despite the civil society being on the rise in Jordan, very few young Jordanians are active in civil society. In fact, there is a large disconnect between Jordanian youth and political institutions. This does not mean that they are apathetic nor unwilling to participate; instead, they are extremely ambitious and show a strong desire for active civic engagement. This is demonstrated in the latest political mutation in the MENA where Arab youth spearheaded Arab spring, and throughout the research you have conducted.

Student unions, religious institutions, and local youth clubs receive higher superiority among university students over grassroots organisations. Those entities prevail high levels of trust among youth to advocate their interests to policymakers. It is believed that such institutions have a better understanding of young people issues, needs, and aspirations in comparison to the political institution. These are seen by research participants as being more distant from the concerns of young people.

Cultural barriers

Opportunities for youth to engage in governance is directly dependent on the cultural context. This refers to peoples’ cultural expectations, traditional values, patriarchal structures and societal norms (Mental Model) about youth and their participation in the public arena. Interviews and data from focus groups revealed that traditional society customs and habit is a major hurdle. Generally speaking, the patriarchal system in Jordan leaves youth inferior to the older generation. Young people are often in situations where decisions are being made for them by older ‘society gatekeepers’. This instils the feeling of being less valuable. As one focus group participant claimed; “they feel what they say is not taken seriously by adults, whether being politicians or from the local community” (Focus group 24/8/2015). This accentuates the lack of confidence about the capacities and strength of young people. In contrast, my discussion shows that they have the ability to clearly demonstrate their needs, and articulate Amman urban issues, but are not afforded proper opportunities by those in power.

Rethinking Amman 2025?

Youth empowerment is key to tackle superficial youth engagement in the decision-making at the municipal level (Checkoway et al., 2005). There is a pronounced consensus among interviewees on the importance of fostering youth’s analytical and critical thinking skills. Schools and universities are on the frontline to foster democratic upbringing. Unfortunately, the curricula of academic institutions in Jordan is devoid of any political education. Such institutions could sponsor debates with politicians or city officials to create channels of knowledge transfer with young generations. Fostering political education would enable young generations to interact reciprocally with policy-makers and with their local communities.

In agreement with this, volunteering and social activism are hence pertinent to greater youth empowerment. Interviewees underscored that volunteering is in itself a form of participation, which will eventually reinforce civic entrepreneurship among youth. One interviewee indicated that “Volunteering is the first step towards a genuine and effective public involvement in development” (Interview 16/07/2015). Urban volunteering could encompass a range of activities, including forest conservation, promoting environmental sustainability, and local park maintenance.

This article showcases a part of an ongoing PhD research regarding youth participation in urban planning in Amman, Jordan. However, a further investigation about the benefit of youth participation to urban planning will be published as a follow-up of this article in due course.

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