AMMAN, JORDAN (Re) Revisiting the Valley Section

This project uncovers the underplayed link between water-diversion for urbanization and agriculture and the resulting desertification in one of the world’s most disputed and symbolic border-river regions. In the Jordan River Basin, it has been proven that the most controversial aspect of water distribution is not scarcity but allocation and control. The premise for expedited change is that both agriculture and urban settlement along the Jordan River in their current format will increase the contention in this already sensitive region if they do not evolve and adapt to new realities.
This is a proposal for a regional landscape planning and design scheme that necessitate an understanding of the landscape’s limitations and potentials. The result is a new linear agro-urbanization regime for the Jordan Valley — one that is based on more localized, de-engineered, and decentralized infrastructures involving transboundary regions, new land use patterns, novel housing typologies, and the revisiting of the “Valley Section.”