**6. Conclusions**

The purpose of this research was to understand changes in the city character as imposed by the policy implementation, in addition to exploring public opinions regarding that change. Accordingly, the research performed a longitudinal study that focused on the history of the city and its flowing stream as a kernel for urban settlement and the procession of urban planning policies and master plans focused on the stream and the downtown of the capital city of Amman. Then it analyzed layers of change to the land use, the urban morphology and the public perception before and after the stream coverage.

What distinguishes this research is that it has combined between Green's methodology (1999, 2000, and 2010) in exploring the city character based on community perception, and the methodology of Beyhan and Çelebi [70] who analyzed the relationship between the change of urban identity and the urban transformation through analyzing the morphological characteristics in urban built environments. In addition, it studied the city character change induced by the implementation of land use development policies, through physical, perceptual and functional assessment of the city character transformations.

This research could be considered as foundation research to assess the relationship between policy implementation and city character. This assessment methodology can be applied to the micro- and macroscales of the city to provide an understanding of the change and the factors driving it.

For the case of the Amman stream in particular, this research opens the gate to stimulate different assessment and evaluation methods to explore urban planners' points of view to fix the situation of the covered stream (Quraysh Street), or even to persuade the decision-makers to reevaluate opening up the stream. This research may open up an opportunity for further research to explore and trace the societal changes demonstrated in the small details of the lifestyle in downtown and community behavior towards the city center.

Future applicable policies need to be reevaluated to determine their success and social acceptance, and to avoid irreparable losses to the environment and the culture of the place. Physical and environmental elements of cities are important in shaping the public perception of the city character. Therefore, it is important to preserve these distinctive elements, to maintain their meanings and the memory of the place for future generations.

Both the perceptual views and the physical changes induced by the coverage support retaining city character by creating a framework for a stream corridor. Many other green corridors in the city can become part of this greenway or green corridor network in the future plans to improve urban ventilation. This research recommends a future study that can focus on the cost–benefit values for implementing green fingers strategy, as once proposed by the 1955 plan, in the city of Amman. This is important because it may have a major impact on climate change and the economic factors, which are not detailed in this study.

**Supplementary Materials:** The following are available online at http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/8/12/195/s1.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, A.A.G. and E.M.A.; data curation, E.M.A.; investigation, A.A.G. and E.M.A.; methodology, A.A.G. and E.M.A.; writing—original draft, A.A.G. and E.M.A.; writing—review and editing, A.A.G., E.M.A., and L.B.A.

**Funding:** No funding was received for this research. However, supporting documents were provided by Amman Municipality.

**Acknowledgments:** We thank Greater Amman Municipality for providing us with photos and plans from their archives. Colleagues who helped developing and strengthen our research including Atef Nusseir and Yasmein Okour. This work was done at Jordan University of Science and Technology as part of the fulfillments of Master's thesis submission requirements.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.
