It took almost two years of work by international and Jordanian experts. It is a document of almost 400 pages. And it was delivered by Mayor Omar Maani to HM King Abdullah II yesterday, May 12, 2008. It’s the Amman Plan.

Yesterday has the potential to become a key date in Amman’s history. For the first time in (probably) decades has the Amman municipality produced a comprehensive plan, based on an ambitious, progressive vision, that will shape Amman for the two decades to come.

Land use, urban intensification, public transport, urban heritage, green areas, industrial zones, roads, development corridors, high-rise building regulations, agriculture.. All of this and more is covered in the Amman Plan. It is a truly staggering effort to which a large number of people contributed.

The vision behind this plan is extremely ambitious. So ambitious, in fact, that it can seem like a dream. It’s a vision for an efficient, organized, inclusive, sustainable, cultured, entrepreneurial and soulful city that aims to make Amman the best city in the region to live in.

The Amman Plan was developed by the global consulting firm BearingPoint and the Canada-based planning firm Planning Alliance. In December 2007, the plan won Amman the World Leadership Award.

Everything now depends on wether or not the plan gets translated into action. This is not a matter of months, but years. It will require a change in mindsets by everyone in Amman. It will require a totally revamped/reenergized municipal body. Will Amman be up to it?

I will be blogging more about this in the coming weeks.

Yesterday night, the Ikbis.com team launched a new version of the home page. This new edition starts to reflect Ikbis’s evolved thinking and some of our new strategies, which will start to become more apparent in the coming months.

Expect to see more cool contests from Ikbis, which will encourage people produce great videos and photos. We also have a surprise in store, coming soon. We’re not saying much in the promotional box which shows two scruffy primitives and a mosquito, but I am sure that you will like what we’re cooking for you.

A few months ago we celebrated Ikbis’ first birthday. Now the site is around 18 months old. Things are taking shape and our ideas are getting clarified. Our team has grown and we are in a position to realize a lot of what we set out to do in the beginning. We’re fixing a lot of stuff behind the scenes and working on new features too.

So here’s to more Coffee, Code and Computers (and a big cheer to the Ikbis team and users)..

We truly live in a dangerous time. Never before in my generation’s time has the world been so full of hateful propaganda, fear and mutual suspicion.

What is scary is that extremists, absolutists and outright fanatics from all cultures and all quarters seem to have won the upper hand right now.

Yet at the same time, there are voices of sanity that still can be heard.

I found two online videos that concern the role of religion in today’s world. The first, utterly hateful and disgusting I found in this shocking article in Mother Jones, which covers the anti-Islam views of fundamentalist pastor Reverend Rod Parsley:

During a 2005 sermon, a fundamentalist pastor whom Senator John McCain has praised and campaigned with called Islam “the greatest religious enemy of our civilization and the world,” claiming that the historic mission of America is to see “this false religion destroyed.” In this taped sermon, currently sold by his megachurch, the Reverend Rod Parsley reiterates and amplifies harsh and derogatory comments about Islam he made in his book, Silent No More, published the same year he delivered these remarks. Meanwhile, McCain has stuck to his stance of not criticizing Parsley, an important political ally in a crucial swing state.

To think that a man who might soon have his finger on the triggers on the world’s biggest destructive arsenal considers a hater like Parsley a spiritual guide is simply scary beyond belief!

That’s not to say that Islam doesn’t have its fair share of out of control fanatics. Many of Amman’s Friday prayers end with “Oh God Please Destroy the White House” and stuff like that. But the video above just shows that such ideas can come from anywhere and can influence even the world’s top leaders.

Contrast this with the words of religious scholar Karen Armstrong, who, in a recent talk at the amazing TED conference, argued that what religion boils down to is global compassion. Her wish for a Charter of Compassion won her the TED prize this year.

I urge you to watch her talk below. It might not be as easy to understand as the rabid speech of the Reverend above. But its message should be heard if humanity wants to survive the next decade.

Yesterday, Saturday, I decided to finally start my ‘project’ of documenting the old shop and office signs of downtown Amman.

I parked my car at the top end of a staircase leading down from Jabal Amman to Basman street. I started taking some pictures, then my camera’s battery died. I bought a pack of batteries from a small photographic shop and headed toward King Faisal street.

As I looked up to the upper floors of the buildings, I had a strange feeling. They looked to clean. It took around five minutes to realize what happened. I am too late with my project!

I feeling of sadness and helplessness overcame me as I realized what happened. The Amman’s municipality’s cleanup project has already reached downtown. Almost all the signs of the upper floor are gone.

I had conflicted feelings as I looked for remaining signs to photograph. On one hand I am all for the signage cleanup of Amman. But in downtown Amman, the cleanup has wiped out a layer of history that went undocumented.

What I missed the most were those sign of doctors and layers. As I looked for them I noticed that a lot of the upper floors of downtown are actually abandoned. It’s totally sad.

The names of the lawyers, doctors and trader used to provide an insight into the civic and commercial life of Amman in the 40’s, 50’s, 60’s and even 70’s. I am happy to have found I few examples still hanging on the facades.

The framed tin rectangles with their simple, elegant lettering and their slightly inclined installation (to make them more visible to the street level, have an amazing dignity to them that today’s signage rarely matches.

I am not a nostalgic nor a conservative person. But looking at the urban structures and old signage of downtown Amman made me think. It seems that the strict rules of building, lettering and sign-making of the mid 20th century have produced an urban environment that makes a ‘modern’ shopping district like Suweifieh seem like an atrocity.

I asked one of the shopkeeper about what happened to the signs. He gave me an account of how the Greater Amman Municipality has strictly enforced its new regulations. He also gave me a few hints on where I might be able to find those old signs. I will update you later if I succeed in tracking any of them down, although I think the chances are slim.

I will definitely take another tour through downtown soon. I am paying attention to the names of the sign-makers on the signs I am photographing. For now, I am just taking pictures. But I am noticing names like ‘Abed Joukhi’, ‘Sabanekh’ and ‘Hassan’ recurring on various signs.

A real documentation would note the exact places where these signs are found. I should also be taking to people to know the dates of the signs. IBut I don’t think I will be able to do that.

Downtown Amman is an urban gem. It is an amazing urban environment. It is not Damascus, not Jerusalem and not Cairo. And that precisely why it is unique. It tells the story of an Arab city which was reborn in the 20th century as the ancient Ottoman empire faded and the modern Arab state was born. The bilingual signs are a reflection of both the heritage of the British mandate but also a certain openness to the world. The old traces of modern shopping sit side by side with traditional publishing houses that used to print Islamic books. The architecture is transitional: from Ottoman Levantine to modern.

As I walked I realized that it would be very wrong to turn downtown into a cleaned up tourist attraction. Yes, it needs to be cleaned up. And yes it needs to regain some dignity after the sons of its founders abandoned it to Jabal Amman, Shmeisani and Abdoun. But any future development of downtown Amman should be careful to retain its authenticity as an amazing mix of influences and cultures.

One tough lesson I learned today. Never ever postpone documenting aging things: people, buildings, signs. You never know when you will loose them for good.

I leave you with some photos here, followed by a link to a Flickr set that contains most of the photos I shot.

The best shot of the tour: Debbas store

Just look at the visual inventiveness of this sign: Ashoury Shoes.

Thank goodness I still found some of these simple, elegant doctor’s clinics signs..

Falling behind a modern Zain sign.. Sad.

Removed signs and andoned rooms

King Faisal Street in 1970. From Natasha’s Mental Mayhem blog

One really can’t help but support a signage clean up in Amman. Above and below are pictures I took in 2000 of downtown Amman. Sadly I only photographed the horrible examples and ignored the signs that needed documenting.

And here is the the set of photos I took yesterday. Some of them have captions if you are interested..

I have been promising myself for at leas the last 7 years to start photographic the old signs of downtown Amman. But I never got around to doing that.

The beautiful old signs of Amman are disappearing fast. The shops that one day used to be proud establishments have closed. The doctors and the lawyers whose offices where above those shops have either passed away or moved on.

A recent walk through downtown Amman has reminded me of my neglected project. I also found that downtown Amman is even dirtier than I remember it. What a shame.

I quickly snapped photos of two signs that caught my eye. What’s fascinating is how both the Arabic calligraphy and the English lettering of some of the old signs of Amman were of high quality.

I urge everyone who has an interest in this subject to document the signs of downtown Amman. It would also be interesting to document any information about the names of the sign makers of the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s. Who where those people who could do this excellent lettering?

Moving car + Nokia N95 + Dirty windscreen + Amazing Sky + Amman’s streets = THIS.

I share these picture of a breathtaking drive home this evening, as the came from my camera phone. Un-cropped, unedited.

Have you seen this?

I’m calling it Amman’s biggest painting (prove me wrong if you know a bigger one). The wall of the Radisson SAS hotel has been undergoing a transformation for the past few weeks.

The work is by owl-obsessed artist Rima Malallah, who also happens to run the Love on a Bike shop near Rainbow Street.

I finally got to photograph the wall.

Would love to hear what everyone thinks?