Tweet

Today we continue our series exploring the expansion of the Panama Canal. Panamanians recently voted in favor of a $5 billion project to upgrade the century-old waterway. A wider passageway will be able to accommodate larger ships… and bring in more money. Panama has run the canal since 1999, when the American government handed over control. Virtually overnight, Panama was flush with a lot of extra cash: About $500 million in profit annually. That’s a lot of money for a country of three million people. Today, you can see that money at work in the rapid development of the country’s largest city, Panama City. Jason Margolis tells us about the urban planning and environmental challenges the city now faces.
Listen to the radio story

---

Margolis: Panama City is an elongated city, stretched thin, hugging the Pacific coastline. This coastal design works great for a smaller town: everybody gets to be near the beach. But when a city grows to 1.5 million people, problems arise. Transportation for one.

Former U.S. school buses cruise down the city’s few major arteries. The buses are no longer just yellow, they’re colorfully painted and decorated by private owners. It’s a chaotic system with buses racing in front of one and other to steal potential passengers. Young men lean off the sides, screaming the routes. The problem is, they’re going nowhere fast. Congestion is severe in downtown Panama City.

Trute: “You have this, you have a permanent traffic jam.”

Margolis: Manuel Trute is an urban planner and consultant to the city. As he drives through some downtown neighborhoods, Trute says Panama’s transportation leaders are discussing a high-speed bus system with a dedicated lane. They’ve done this successfully in other Latin American cities. The plans here are still theoretical though. And the city just keeps growing.

Panama City is building up to the clouds, with skyscraper after skyscraper. Donald Trump is building a new 65-story tower of luxury apartments. Foreign retirees from North America and Europe are coming here in droves. Wealthy Panamanians are also investing in high-rise living.

Planned Trump Tower

Trute: “I think we are the new Miami. (laughs) I could say that. Maybe people got tired of Miami. Even the architecture looks like what is going on in Miami right now.”

Margolis: The new buildings make for a striking skyline of shimmering glass. That is, unless you’re the neighbor. Some new towers are being built literally less than six inches away from existing single-family homes. Trute says the city isn’t prepared for this kind of haphazard growth.

Trute: “I think this is a city, with what I call growing pains. We’re beginning to grow and more and more; we see the need of more infrastructure and urban planning tools. And the government is facing the need of assuming they have to do something. They’re facing this big problem “OK, you have this, a lot of buildings. You need more roads, you need more water for them, you need more electricity.”

Margolis: Even so, the market demand is hot. And developers are hungry to build more.

Boca La Caja is a small working-class neighborhood in the shadow of the skyscrapers. The streets are a colorful maze of twisting alleys. Families have lived here for generations. It’s a good piece of real estate, right on the water. And developers have been trying to buy out residents like Jose Gonzalez.

Gonzalez: “I don’t want to move. I’ve lived in this home 28 years. Everything is closeby, malls, commerce. If I sell my home I will have to resettle on the outskirts on the city. I’ll have to spend an hour in traffic. “

Margolis: Gonzalez says he would move though if the price were right. Developers have offered him about $100,000 for his small home. He wants $300,000. A woman yells from behind, “We’re being reasonable. The people a few streets over are demanding millions.” She refers to them as “the alligators.” She says we just want what’s fair.

Panama City skyline: Photo by Marcos Guerra, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute

To understand Panama City’s current strains, you have to understand Panama’s geography and history. When the American and Panamanian governments signed a treaty in 1903 to build a canal, the Americans retained control of a five-mile buffer along each side of the waterway. That was the canal zone. Government Urban planner Ariel Espino explains that this effectively squeezed the city.

Espino: “The city doesn’t have a huge space to expand into. This city is basically sandwiched between the ocean and the canal zone.”

Margolis: Building in the canal zone was largely off limits. Engineers knew that a healthy forest was needed to help soak up rainwater and prevent floods into the canal. Those guidelines are still in effect today.

Espino: “So you have an environmental restriction there where you need to preserve a lot of forest, rainforest around the canal. And you have the city growing up against it.”

Margolis: Now that Panama controls the canal zone, the voices clamoring for more building there are becoming louder. But this is also no ordinary rainforest. Panama is a thin isthmus that links Central and South America: a critical passageway for migrating birds and animals.

Lawrence: “For jaguars, for pumas, for harp eagles, for all kinds of species, all kinds of forest dependent species are going to really require a corridor like this for survival.”

Margolis: William Laurance is a scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. He studies forest fragmentation.
With increased land speculation and demands for timber products, Laurance worries about what would happen to migrating animals if the canal zone is paved over. Some squatter settlements have already cropped up. Laurance says it doesn’t take too much development to destroy this migration corridor.
Lawrence: “Sometimes even just a large road is enough to stop a number of these forested interior species such as some of the understory birds.”

Margolis: But with the realities of an overcrowded population and a booming economy, it will be a balancing act between environmental needs and the needs of people.

For the World, I’m Jason Margolis, Panama City, Panama.

* Panama Series
* Part I: The Big Canal
* Part III: Panama fossils
* Panama: A historical perspective