The desert city of Amman is running out of water. Meanwhile, officials fixate on gleaming visions of growth, perpetuating the fantasy that urban dysfunction can be escaped rather than addressed.

While government officials have fixated on promoting a gleaming vision of Amman’s growth, the city has been running out of water. Jordan is mostly desert. The exceptions are an elevated green plateau in the central north, on which Amman sits, and the Jordan Valley, where the land sharply drops to the Dead Sea. Jordan shares its two main rivers with upstream neighbors — the Jordan River flows through Israel, and the Yarmouk River through Syria — and these countries’ dams have long siphoned water for agriculture, greatly reducing Jordan’s share. The kingdom has a short winter rainy season, but...

The desert city of Amman is running out of water. Meanwhile, officials fixate on gleaming visions of growth, perpetuating the fantasy that urban dysfunction can be escaped rather than addressed.

While government officials have fixated on promoting a gleaming vision of Amman’s growth, the city has been running out of water. Jordan is mostly desert. The exceptions are an elevated green plateau in the central north, on which Amman sits, and the Jordan Valley, where the land sharply drops to the Dead Sea. Jordan shares its two main rivers with upstream neighbors — the Jordan River flows through Israel, and the Yarmouk River through Syria — and these countries’ dams have long siphoned water for agriculture, greatly reducing Jordan’s share. The kingdom has a short winter rainy season, but little of that water is captured; over 90 percent of rainfall is lost to evaporation