Help Jordan refugees better integrate with the local community by designing a Bus Rapid Transit.

Challenge

Deliver a solution that addresses the economic and social vulnerabilities refugees face in Amman, Jordan, and provides creative ways that expand access and interaction between refugees and their local communities.

My role

As the design researcher on the team, I conducted design and policy research on the refugee issue, outreached to stakeholders, and reviewed policy reports and urban design literature.

Interviews

We wanted to first learn more about the needs of refugees in Amman to build empathy. However, it was difficult to reach refugees in Amman from Toronto, without visiting in-person. So we reached out to NGO managers, refugee camp directors, urban planning professors and urban designers who have participated in the urban planning of Amman to explore the problem space.

Professor Luna Khirfan from University of Waterloo, who was a renown urban planning professor for Amman, suggested that although we considered urban refugees as our key stakeholder, in order to solve the root issue, it was critical to address the underlying spatial and social-economic class distinction in Amman between the rich and the poor.

The Program Manager at Collateral Repair Project (CRP), one of the most influential refugees aid NGOs in Amman, indicated that the greatest challenge for CRP is accessing the most underserved community members in East Amman. Since most new beneficiaries hear about them through word of mouth, it was difficult for refugees without connections to be aware of the services.

Takeaways — Inspired by their insights, our solution will not only try to connect different groups, but also serve as clear signals and point of contact for refugees in the city.

Literature review

Insight 01

Focus on urban refugees, rather than camp refugees

80% of refugees scattered across the city and remain “invisible” from the public attention, rather than living in the concentrated aid camps, which often received lots of support from NGOs.

Amman is divided into two distinct economic and cultural districts: East and West Amman. Once a distinction of geography, the two districts now represent a social-economic divide between the wealthier Jordan families residing in the west and the relatively poorer Jordanians and marginalized refugees residing in the east.

Insight 02

Focus on increasing mobility for marginalized groups

In the past decade, Amman’s population has grown from 2.6M to more than 4M, driven by immigrants and refugees. 32% of household don’t have a private vehicle, while the current urban infrastructure in Amman is suffering from chronic congestions.

Transportation cost accounts for 25-30% of household income for the lower and middle class, where the class distinctions are further aggregated by physical disconnection. Therefore, the current lack of urban infrastructure and mobility is key.

Insight 03

Serves not only refugees, but also less-wealthy Jordanians

Due to traditional mode of aids, marginalized refugees are provided with monthly stipends from NGOs, which induces conflicts between the poor refugees and poor Jordanians in East Amman for housing resources, in addition to conflicts for water services, education, healthcare, employment opportunities, and civic infrastructure. Thus, we should focus on designing a solution that serves not only refugees but also the less-wealthy Jordanians to resolve conflicts and increase access to necessary resources.

Redefine the Problem

Although we consider marginalized refugees as our key stakeholder, in order to solve the root issue, it is critical to address problems of a greater scope, especially the underlying issues of the spatial and social-economic class divide between the rich and the poor. Thus, we propose a distributed urban infrastructure system connected by public rapid transit line to address two core needs of urban refugees: (1) spatial segmentation and (2) social-economic divide.

Ideation & Strategy

Therefore, we proposed a bus rapid transit system, LINK! BRT, with a series of programmed stations scattered along the routes.  Besides its purpose to providing an affordable and efficient mode of mobility, bus routes now act as socio-cultural corridors that dissolve the spatial boundary between the East and West and link two polarized communities together. The project identifies the overlooked land on conventional BRT routes as civic opportunities. Every LINK! BRT station become an intervention and serve as sites of exchange to the surrounding communities, which has the potential to generate a cultural shift.

This project identifies a catalogue of potential programs to be featured in BRT stations, including workshop, fab lab, community cafe, art gallery, urban farm, recreational facilities, employment services, and etc. Each LINK! station will feature a distinct melange of programs, determined by site-specific research and analysis. Moreover, these stations will feature collaborative programs to provide valuable spaces that are desperately needed by community and refugee organizations to host workshops or training sessions for refugees, migrants, and local communities.

By looking at the refugee crisis not as a problem existing in vacuum, leveraging the BRT system as a civic infrastructure and existing resources, this proposal introduces an infrastructural investment with lasting impacts and an ecosystem of organizations and relationships that has the potential to establish opportunities not just for refugees, but all members of the community. The design integrates refugee populations and the local communities together by resolving the underlying urban spatial divide between west and east, and the socio-economic divide between the affluent and the marginalized.

Feedback & Evaluation

We connected with the Programs and Admin Manager at Collateral Repair Project in Amman, author of the article “More than a master plan: Amman 2025”, a Professor Emeritus of Urban Planning at Columbia GSAPP, Geographer and PhD at World Bank, and the Policy Officer at Stichting Vluchteling, an International Rescue Committee, to gain helpful feedbacks to improve our strategy design.

Professor Beauregard, author of the article “More than a master plan: Amman 2025” and a Professor Emeritus of Urban Planning at Columbia GSAPP, pointed out the potential complex political issues with the implementation of the strategy plan. He suggested that “all planning faces the challenge of developing political support” and we require enough “controls and incentives that will encourage investments and government agencies to coordinate with the plan”. Therefore, it is important to incorporate governmental partnership to leverage greater political support for our design.

We also had a Skype interviewed with Emily Lewis, the Livelihoods Coordinator at Danish Refugee Council (DRC) in Amman. Emily mentioned that east Amman’s lack of clear mapping and inefficient public transportation system prevent urban refugees to improve their opportunities for livelihood. She suggested us to also consider how we could have citizens to adapt to the idea of multi-functional bus stops and identify clear user scenarios for the urban infrastructure.

Final Design

A civic infrastructure that turns refugee problems into opportunities for social cohesion and urban integration.