Strategies toward Greater Youth Participation in Jordan’s Urban Policymaking

Abstract

Seventy percent of the population in Jordan is young and urban. A plethora of research demonstrated that collaborative urban policymaking would positively impact youth’s physiological and physical welfare as well as the quality of urban planning. Nevertheless, youth participation in Jordan’s urban planning is fragile, limited, and sporadic. Youth marginalization from urban policymaking would deter sustainable urban development. Therefore, this article examines the most convenient strategy to promote the inclusion of young Jordanians in the planning practice to be fully-fledged members of society. The fuzzy Delphi method (FDM) was employed to mathematically analyze the level of importance of each suggested strategy based on the opinions of eight experts with long experience in promoting youth participation in Jordan’s public policy. Research results reveal that adopting cutting-edge communication technology is the most suitable strategy to genuinely recognize youth input, opinions, and experience in urban policymaking.

Keywords:

• Fuzzy Delphi method
• ICT communication technology
• sustainable urban development
• urban Jordan
• youth participation

Notes

1 There is no unanimity on a numerical definition of youth in the professional or scholarly works of literature. For statistical purposes, international development agencies such as the World Bank (W.B.) and the United Nations (U.N.) have traditionally classified youth as everyone aged 15–24 (Palmy David & Buchanan, 2020).

2 The terms Global South/North are commonly used in development literature, and they have been used interchangeably with other, related terminology such as developing and developed nations.

3 The ideology behind youth involvement in the Global South is firmly backed and recommended by international aid donors (i.e., UN, UNDP, UKAID, USAID, the World Bank, IMF, and JICA). (Greenaway, 2011). Several international organizations and donors operating in the Global South promote youth participation in urban policymaking, but their support is sporadic and depends on the availability of public funds or internationally funded projects.

4 The annual rate of population growth in Jordan was reported at 0.64363% in 2021 (DoS, 2022).

5 Amman 2025 is a strategic spatial plan initiated in 2005 for the city of Amman, Jordan.

6 Daher (2005) coined the term “architectural cosmetics” to criticize the mere aesthetical treatment in urban regeneration in Jordanian cities. According to Daher (2005), urban regeneration approach should be holistic to include aspects of physical development along with addressing cultural and social issues.

7 Three essential characteristics of entrepreneurialism include a concentration on urban economic growth, commercial partnerships between the state and the private sector, and a deliberate recruitment of the creative class (professionals, high level innovators, and scientists) (Obeng-Odoom, 2017).

8 Healey (2003, p. 103) referred to governance as managing collective affairs (i.e., urban policymaking) among fundamental societal forces. Good governance means deliberating urban policymaking decisions among the civil society, the state and the market (Innes et al., 1994), representing a paradigm shift in policymaking from expert-led, technocratic plans to consensual collaborative planning (Legacy et al., 2018; Wang et al., 2021). The foundation of good urban governance is built on the principle that people of all ages and genders should enjoy urban citizenship benefits. Good urban governance maintains that no man, woman, or child should be denied access to urban policymaking (Legacy et al., 2018; Wang et al., 2021).

9 social fragmentation in urban Jordan was portrayed as manifestations of conflict between big businesses and ordinary citizens, taking on the form of “us” and “them.” For instance, New Abdali is a form of the enclosed gated community accomodating several high-rise buildings, providing seclusion and exclusivity for the “high-end” social strata. The project is well guarded and fitted with advanced CCTV security systems providing services solely to insular people's agendas, needs, and interests.

10 It is worth noting that the government of Jordan (GoJ) has enacted in September, 2022 the Child Rights Law after 25 years from signing the UN’s Convention on the Rights of the Child. The Act make it a requirement for Jordanian planners to involve children and youth in the urban planning agenda (i.e., Articles: 7, 18, 19).

11 This mainly include but not limited to waste management and collection, sweeping and overhauling inner streets, park maintenance, and landscaping.

12 The most critical and relevant legislation for this research are the Decentralisation Act of 2015, no. 49 and Municipalities Act of 2015, no. 41.

13 In the 1980s, John Forester and Jürgen Habermas established the idea of “communicative rationality” in sharp contrast to the instrumental rationality that dominated the planning sector after WWII (Schoenwandt, 2016, p. 4).

14 Social capital refers to characteristics of strong interpersonal connections aligned with feelings of trust and solidarity that facilities cooperation for the common good (De Souza & Grundy, 2007).

15 See also Manouchehri and Burns (2021).

16 Snowballing is a networking strategy that generates a study sample by referring people who share or know of others who have some interests in the study under investigation (Zeadat, 2018, p. 81).

17 The notion of e-governance is a modern technology adopted by government to digitally link their institutions with each other on one hand, and with other private institutions and the public on the other (Alqudah & Muradkhanli, 2021). E-governance speed and facilitate the accurate and easy access to information, data and services (Umbach & Tkalec, 2022).

18 Jordanian adult community members' often stereotyping of youth with limited experience in urban issues.