Online event hears of Amman’s urban response to COVID-19

AMMAN — The Greater Amman Municipality (GAM) in partnership with The International Growth Centre (IGC), hosted an online interactive colloquium, titled “Amman’s Urban Response to COVID-19”, sharing the city’s experience in responding to the unprecedented pandemic. 

The online event focused on Amman’s city-level response to COVID-19, the various institutional measures GAM has undertaken to mitigate the spread of the virus, in addition to areas related to city planning for disaster recovery, according to a GAM statement sent to The Jordan Times on Wednesday.

“Like many other cities, Amman has faced additional challenges at the beginning of 2020. An unprecedented challenge posed by a pandemic that threatens the lives of millions,” Amman Mayor Yousef Shawarbeh said in the statement made available to The Jordan Times.

Shawarbeh said that GAM has made an early response to the outbreak, in keeping with the Royal vision of undertaking all precautionary measures aimed at mitigating the spread of the virus in “our precious Jordan”.

Nuha Qteish, GAM’s executive director of Planning during the online colloquium reflected on the major themes of the institutional performance and the city’s resilience while presenting a report on the pandemic issued by GAM in September.

The report’s themes included the actions taken to maintain the safety of Amman residents through developing a strategy to deal with clinical and hazardous waste, in addition to ensuring that citizens are provided with needed services by increasing the number of e-services and raising health awareness.

Urban planner and Research Scholar Patrick Lamson-Hall pointed out the need to distinguish between the concepts of population density and overcrowding and their impact on the spread of pandemics in cities.

Lamson-Hall also said that studies have shown that high rates of overcrowding promote the spread of the pandemic and not high population densities.

The online event brought in experience and evidence on the best practices and roles of planning from developing cities, as well as discussed the measures aimed at increasing the post-COVID-19 resilience, according to IGC’a official website.