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opinion
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The right to our city by Raúl Leis R. --- raulleisr@hotmail.com First, a clarification, and then the subject that occupies us today. My name was included without my consent or knowledge as one of the founders of a new group that will promote the "yes" vote (Así Sí) in the canal expansion referendum. I must clarify that I am not a part of this or any other such group, nor is my wife Mariela Arce. On August 15 we commemorated one more anniversary of the Spanish foundation of Panama City, although many ignore --- or don't want to accept --- that before that there existed an important indigenous settlement in this place. Later the city grew amidst important challenges, among which are the need to define the city we want and to which we have a right. Today the environmental, spatial, social and human effects of urban macro-projects is one of the dangers that looms over the quality of city life. This adds to other knots tied to a city that grew longitudinally, closed in by the sea and the old Canal Zone, and another one, Colon, that developed surrounded on four sides by the North American presence. With the reversion the capital grew by one-third, adding urban areas and bases on its perimeter. The challenge is impressive: how to convert lethal installations into living spaces, contaminated firing ranges into environmentally healthy areas, barracks into cities of knowledge. We are also challenged too maintain an efficiently functioning canal, but as a development for the benefit of all. It's something like the Biblical beating of swords into plowshares. You're dealing with First World assets that have passed into the hands of a small Third World country, and must now use them in ways compatible with the country's development. A fundamental issue is the social construction of threats. That is, how we residents are ourselves creating threats against our own existence. Although the threats appear to be natural, in practice they assert themselves through human actions. We have degraded the environment by deforestation, the destruction and obstruction of rivers and streams, the pollution of the sea and indiscriminate urban sprawl. The cities in particular are very complex entities that provoke and create threats in their midst. On the one hand, neighborhoods and populated areas are planned and built without providing the necessary infrastructures like drains and sewer systems and are sold by manipulative and deceptive advertising, and on the other hand, the search for satisfaction of basic necessities and the absence of real housing solutions sends the urban poor out in search --- wherever --- of spaces in which to inhabit and survive. There's a galloping urban growth which by its very style of development is generating urban risks and ever greater vulnerability. The dynamic and logic of territories must be constantly redefined in order to respond to this problem. Only if we are conscious that the majority of threats are socially constructed can we articulate proposals on how to reverse a situation that puts so many people in danger. The tendencies are toward accelerated urbanization, disordered urban growth, destruction of the natural environment, urban poverty, and lack of institutional development, which create vulnerability and its economic, political and social repercussions. Disasters are going to keep occurring in the big cities, so long as the urban model is exclusionary, without any real capacity for planning and reorganization, subordinated to the market and lacking in any viable urban reform proposal to humanize the cities. The evidence is that the weight of the threat falls heavier on areas of urban poverty. The future tendency is toward growing poverty-stricken urban sprawl. In Panama it's likely that a greater proportion of the poor will be concentrated in the urban areas, says the World Bank, as a considerable part of the urban population is vulnerable to or at risk of poverty because they live just over the poverty line. At the same time they are vulnerable to threatened calamities like the recent floods because many of their houses are situated in high risk areas and built without adequate protection to confront the effects of such catastrophes. Fifty-six percent of Panama's 2.8 million inhabitants live in urban areas. In these urban areas there are 232,000 poor, of whom 47 are in a state of extreme poverty. Almost a quarter of the poor live in cities (23 percent). Children and minors under the age of 18 years represent almost half (46 percent) of the country's urban poor. This has grave generational implications. Popular housing can be grouped in three categories: the emergency neighborhoods, the housing areas build by the private or governmental sectors, and the deteriorated central areas. The first two are susceptible to floods and landslides, and the third to fires and collapses due to the dilapidation and abandonment of the buildings. It's necessary to confront this with an urban development strategy based upon a territorial ordering, a sustainable and holistic urban reform and a determined effort to confront poverty. Panama City faces the challenge to come up with an urban development with a quality life. We have the right to a city that's not divided by walls into enclaves, but built by and for everybody.
Raúl Leis is a sociology professor, Panama's most honored living playwright, a newspaper columnist, one of the founders and leaders of the Panamanian Center for Social Studies and Action (CEASPA, a Panama City think tank), and an activist in the fields of environmentalism, human rights and governmental reform. He was the chairperson of the Foro 2020 which arose from the 2020 National Vision process.
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