Integration of the former Panama Canal Zone into Metro Panama City

Abstract

The author, an architect-planner, Urbio, S.A., Panama, graduate of the School of Architecture, University of Panama, the Institut d'Urbanisme, University of Paris, and Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, has held key positions in a variety of public and private planning agencies as a consultant and specialist in Geographic Information Systems (G.I.S.) for major development projects in Panama such as Land Use and Traffic Study of the Port of Balboa; Development Plan for Sherman-San Lorenzo; La Cuenca Hidrográfica del Canal de Panamá: Posibilidades de un Desarrollo Sustentable (The Hydrographical Basin of the Panama Canal: Possibilities for Sustainable Development); Metodologías de Avalúo de los Terrenos Revertidos del Area del Canal (Methodologies for the Valuation of Reverted Land of the Area of the Canal); and Estudio Urbanístico y Demográfico del Area Metropolitana de Panamá (Urban and Demographic Study of the Metropolitan Regionof Panama). Alvaro Uribe has also published La Ciudad Fragmentada (The Fragmented City), an essay on urban development in Panama City (Panama City, CELA, Ediciones Formato Dieciséis, 1989), and a considerable number of papers and a study report on the subject of this paper and other related projects. He is a member of the World Society for Ekistics (WSE). The text that follows is a slightly edited and revised version of a paper presented at the WSE Symposion "Defining Success of the City in the 21st Century," Berlin, 24-28 October, 2001. It was kindly translated from the Spanish by Professor Lawrence D. Mann, also a member of the WSE and a participant at the Symposion.