Overcrowding and Its Effects on the Social and Spatial Aspects of the Urban Fabric. The Case of Jabal Al-Natheef, Amman, Jordan

Abstract

Amman has been a city of refugees since its modern foundation in the mid-nineteenth century where strangers, no matter their origin, were protected. The city has absorbed wave after wave of refugees, most of who have stayed and settled [1]. The influx of thousands of Palestinian refugees to Amman in 1948 marked a turning point in the city’s economic and social fabric, increasing Jordan’s population from 500,000 to 1.5 million within two years, one-third of whom being Palestinian refugees. The second wave of 400,000 Palestinians came in 1967, when Israel occupied the West Bank. According to the British geographer Jane Hacker (1960), these waves highly influenced the social and political transformation, and development issues of Amman, including those of land use, city growth, population densities, internal commercial structures, and residential differentiations [2]. In addition, Ala’ Al-Hamarneh (2001) stated that “Amman was built on the pain of others” [3, p. 173]. According to the Jordanian Department of Statistics, the greatest concentration of Amman’s population resides in the eastern part of the city which includes one large official Palestinian camp and several other neighborhoods with significant Palestinian population. This study mainly focuses on one of these large neighborhoods, Jabal Al-Natheef. Jabal Al-Natheef is Centre for Research on Settlements and Urbanism