The Jordan Gate Towers of Amman: Surrendering Public Space to Build a Neoliberal Ruin

The Jordan Gate Towers of Amman, a luxury development, provide a case study of forms of planning practice undertaken as part of neoliberal processes in a city aspiring for regional relevance, well timed with the receipt of transnational capital investment. Deregulated planning practice in Amman became a vehicle for the inversion of the process of eminent domain and the subsequent appropriation of public property for private profit. The result is a compromise of public interest in favor of government collaboration with private developers, a conundrum examined in this article through the case of the Jordan Gate Towers. Findings are based upon data and documents collected from the municipality, and interviews with city officials.