One small step for Amman: could a viral video shake up Jordan's stifled capital?

An architect's video outlining ambitious proposals for Amman's biggest urban failure, the Jordan Gate Project, has gone viral. Has previous apathy towards the city's lack of community life now turned into a hunger for public space?

Architect Hanna Salameh is blunt about how his city is different from many others. "We have no concept of sidewalks," he says. "We really see them as something you cross over to get to your car. I think that's why so many people throw trash on the sidewalks - we have no connection to our streets. You don't walk there and you don't see it as yours."

Instead, the streets of the Jordanian capital are something else entirely: slow-moving strips of metallic colour, car roofs gleaming beneath fast food drive-thru signs and glass-fronted malls in interminable gridlock. If Amman was built for cars, it sometimes seems incapable of dealing with them.