The Jordan Strategy Forum issued a paper titled “Amman: Making Significant Progress Towards Achieving the Concept of Smart Cities” as part of the “Briefing Papers” series, aiming to shed light on the performance of the city of Amman in the Smart Cities Index for the year 2024 and compare it to the previous report.
The forum explained that the Smart Cities Index issued by the Smart City Observatory covers 142 cities from different world economies and aims to monitor citizens’ opinions on infrastructure and technology services in cities. The paper indicated that Zurich, Oslo, and Canberra were in the top three positions, while Beirut, Sana’a, and Guatemala City were in the bottom positions.
In terms of Amman’s performance on the index, a significant improvement was recorded as it climbed 7 ranks to reach the 128th place globally and 10th place regionally in the 2024 report, compared to the 135th place globally and 12th place regionally in the previous year (out of 141 participating cities in 2023).
Amman showed progress in all sub-indicators within the infrastructure and technology axes according to the forum’s report. “Satisfaction with recycling services” and “meeting the needs of underprivileged areas in sewage services” were among the highlights, in addition to “citizen participation in making decisions of local government” within the infrastructure axis. As for technology, there was improvement in the indicator “reduced waiting time for online issuance or updating of identity documents,” “providing online reporting methods for city maintenance issues,” and “availability of online schedules and ticket sales for public transportation.”
The forum in its paper pointed out the need for additional attention to some indicators such as “ease of finding rental housing at 30% or less of monthly income,” “traffic congestion,” and “companies’ ability to create new jobs” in the infrastructure field, as well as some aspects of the technology axis such as “ease of access to job listings online,” “quality of teaching IT skills in schools,” and “providing services that facilitate starting a new business.”
The paper stated that survey participants still see unemployment, affordable housing, traffic congestion, corruption, and job market satisfaction as the most pressing challenges in the city, despite their improving perceptions compared to the previous year, except for unemployment and jobs. In this context, the forum called for the necessity to focus on achieving comprehensive and sustainable economic growth that supports the creation of meaningful job opportunities for Jordanians.
