This paper examines the migration of Iraqis, Palestinians and Syrians in the 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s to the city of Amman. It explores the resulting changes to the development and character of the city. The paper finds that Amman’s residents have consistently attached more importance to their economic well-being than to political doctrine, ethno-national pride, or religious zeal. As a result of its location and stability, Amman has emerged as the largest refugee city in the world. It has retained a measure of demographic harmony among its many residents despite the tense regional climate of the Middle East. In addition, this paper provides the reader with a general overview of the demographic and urban realities of Amman today. The argument is advanced that, even with large numbers of migrants, refugees, and exiles coming into the city, the fabric of the urban community of Amman has held together peacefully. The fact that this is still the case even when the city is prohibitively expensive, resources are scarce, neighbors are at/in war, in chaos, or on edge, and local unemployment rates are high, is significant. The paper identifies the reasons that account for this relative harmony, based on a range of primary sources, including interviews with key decision makers and recent archival material from the Department of the National Library and the Department of Statistics in Jordan. The paper deliberately employs a broad approach to understanding the realities of modern Amman during this period. Instead of focusing on one aspect of Amman’s physical development or one theme in its political and social history, it probes broadly the story of Amman’s urban, socio-economic, and political development since 1990. My choice of a multitude of themes relating to Amman is also influenced by a genre in urban history used to examine cities that engages both the physical/spatial and sociological aspects of a city, instead of either one or the other. The re-writing of the history of Amman in this vein is an important historical subject with wide-ranging theoretical, historiographical and empirical implications.