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A new law, new implementing regulations, key court cases, market forces and a growing civic movement all in play

Panama's emerging urban planning regime

by Eric Jackson

After long months of hype, more than the usual consultation and a last-minute legislative jam-through in the waning days of the 2005 legislative session, President Torrijos signed Law 6 of February 1, 2006, which was touted as Panama's first meaningful urban planning law.

Yes, the old Interoceanic Regional Authority had passed a land use law for the former Canal Zone, but that was only advisory. Similarly weak were Panama City's urban planning laws. When a few hard and fast things like an old ban on construction higher than 12 stories in most instances began to be taken seriously by the courts, developers flexed their muscles and the Moscoso-era legislature quickly repealed that stricture.

Sociologist, playwright and columnist Raúl Leis characterized the historic roots of Panama's "almost anything goes" urbanization system a few years back to an audience of business executives. In 1925 tenants who were being gouged as the elimination of canal construction era towns had been steadily driving demand and thus rents for Panama City lodgings rebelled and called a rent strike, and the president of Panama at the time called in the US military, which opened fire on strikers and assisted Panamanian authorities in a wave of mass arrests that included the deportation of those strikers of foreign origin, mostly West Indian or Spanish. At that point the authority of property owners reached its zenith, as a matter of practical politics blocking any consideration of zoning or urban planning for many decades to come.

And what were the poor to do? Many of them found pieces of land on the outskirts of town that nobody cared to defend and set up shacks that they usually improved over the years. Thus in the 50s one such squatter settlement began near the intersection of the Trans-Isthmian Highway and the road out to Tocumen Airport, and now that community has grown into the municipality of San Miguelito, population somewhat more than 350,000. Water, sewer, power and telephone lines came later, and land titles were passed out by successive politicians. Notice the crazy and insufficient road system if you care to drive into San Miguelito: it's the sometimes paved hand-me-down from dozens of squatter invasions.

Panama City's spread to the west and north was blocked by the old Canal Zone, so the squatters headed east and northeast. With increasing population pressure, the flood plains and hillsides prone to slide away with the rain were built upon, leading to periodic disasters.

Then, over the years, the slums of Colon and Panama City were so severely milked by many landlords that the property owners' absolute power of 1925 began to erode. Nobody was allowed to collect rent on tenements that were condemned or evict their residents, but nobody who lived in them was allowed to accrue squatters' rights, so the abandoned slums became progressively worse. However, were there a fire or other demolition, the title holders would get the land back to develop as they wish. Especially under the dictatorship, public housing and cheap subsidized popular housing became factors on the urban landscape.

Still, the conversion of Panama from a mainly rural to a mainly urban society outstripped all of the meager plans to impose order on urban growth, and when the former Canal Zone came into Panamanian hands some of the problems of elsewhere began to intrude there as well.

Housing Minister Balbina Herrera was mayor of San Miguelito during the Noriega dictatorship, and Law 6 was her pet project. However, as soon as it dawned upon various social sectors that the old free-for-all may be ending, intense pressures were brought to bear about the law's implementing regulations. It took almost a year and one-half to write the new rules, which were set down in Executive Decree 23 this past May 16 and can be found online in Spanish at http://www.gacetaoficial.gob.pa/pdfTemp/25794/4564.pdf.

These scant seven pages of regulations are nothing remotely analogous to the BOCA building codes typically found in the USA or any local zoning law with which North Americans would be familiar. The decree talks, for example, about "municipalities gradually assuming a growing participation" in the regulation of urban development. It talks of national, regional and local plans of 20, 15 and 10 years' duration respectively. It specifies five different ways that plans may be elaborated --- actually more, as one of these is "other." It provides for the creation of municipal planning councils. It provides for public consultation, but making few hard and fast rules about public hearings that give reasonable notice and opportunity for affected citizens to be heard. It has a clause that requires government to "place value on heritage components (historical, cultural, artistic, natural) linked to public space" that does not, however, mean that a park or historical site can't be bulldozed for a subdivision.

So how is this all going to work?

Most likely, it will work imperfectly but more or less according to the conflicting demands of interested parties asserted in the political arena and in the courts. Some of the ongoing battle lines being drawn here include:

·        A major rumble over the propriety of commercial developments on public park lands. A cable car and tourist center at the Cerro Ancon National Park is before the courts, as is a case in which a developer and the Torrijos administration on the one hand and environmentalists and historic preservationists on the other are disputing whether a part of the former Fort Clayton is or is not part of a national park and is or is not a protected historical site. Two of the highrise condo developments near the Punta Pacifica mall have grabbed small municipal parks and that's being challenged by both urban planning reform advocates and the city and national governments.

·        Especially in Bella Vista, but throughout the Panama City, a movement to avoid public parks being walled in and shaded out by highrises and to preserve historic buildings. The historic buildings have been taking a beating, both those with interesting old architecture and in the past two years with the demolition of three different houses where presidents of Panama had lived. The highrise threat around Parque Andres Bello in El Cangrejo is still there, but has subsided slightly with the cancellation of some of the plans due to market forces. The developers had the support among the politicians to defeat a call for a large-scale building moratorium in Bella Vista, but there is a growing civic movement of which some public officials are beginning to take fearful notice.

·        A wild speculative real estate boom. However, in the past few years we have seen three "tallest building in Latin America" projects started then halted in Panama City. The most recent such failure was the proposed 104-story Ice Palace on Avenida Balboa.

·        Architects and developers leading the charge against any regulations that would affect the building boom. However, other architects and developers are among the leaders of the movement for more orderly urban growth and it's often the hardest-nosed businesspeople playing the roles of sentinels who call out the warnings of an overheated real estate market that may not be very profitable in the long run.

·        Big problems with putting new highrises into the Panama City skyline that have to do with urban infrastructures, particularly traffic, parking and water. The government has offered a conversion of the city bus system to larger, hinged bus lines and a new landfill into Panama Bay as partial solutions. The Torrijos administration has the votes to approve these projects. However, both the "Transmilenio" bus change and the "Cinta Costera" landfill scheme are panned by many urban planning experts and opposed by various people who consider their interests threatened and there are only about two years left for the current administration to carry out these plans.

·        The waning days of knee-jerk acceptance of simplistic urban planning ideas from formerly more influential sectors. When a group of merchants on the Avenida Central Peatonal argued to the mayor city council that their businesses were hurting and what was needed was the restoration of traffic they quickly acquiesced --- and nearly as quickly backed down before the public outcry about this hasty decision.

·        Arson as a form of urban policy. On an individual level, arson fires to remove slums and return the land to the control of families whose ownership had long been mostly theoretical have been a big problem in Colon and parts of Panama City for a long time. Now a major fire in Panama City's slum neighborhood of Curundu was followed by Housing Ministry dump trucks to remove what was left, including crime scene evidence and the remains of a little girl who was burned to death, so as to prevent people from returning and to make the land available for developers.

The one thing that seems most likely to happen is that urban planning rules will be a campaign issue on both the local and national levels in the 2009 elections. Despite the unclear rules, the system is clearly changing.

Tourist visa changes may be short-lived
City has second thoughts on getting rid of the Avenida Central Peatonal

Urban planning in Panama, such as it has been and may become

Emancipated high school girls expelled

The strange tale of Captain Sherman

Flowing in the streets of the capital
Panama News Briefs