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Monaco with bananas, a tropical Manhattan, or a Singapore for Central America? Explaining rapid urban growth in Panama City, Panama
Author(s) -
Sigler Thomas J.
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
singapore journal of tropical geography
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.538
H-Index - 42
eISSN - 1467-9493
pISSN - 0129-7619
DOI - 10.1111/sjtg.12058
Subject(s) - panama , boom , real estate , geography , central city , economy , economic geography , business , economics , finance , environmental engineering , engineering , ecology , biology
The built environment of P anama C ity, P anama, has undergone a transformative change over the past decade. Hundreds of high‐rise residential towers have sprung up in and around its central business district, eliciting comparisons with Singapore, N ew Y ork and D ubai insofar as journalists, real estate boosters and politicians have associated the increase in tall buildings with a commensurate increase in global status. Concurrently, on the urban periphery, scores of uniform housing estates have been erected to house an upwardly mobile middle class. Triggered by the handover of the P anama C anal and the surrounding C anal Z one in 1999, the city's pronounced building boom has corresponded with the highest rates of economic growth in L atin A merica. This paper examines the complex factors behind the recent transformation of P anama C ity from a historical‐morphological perspective. While the drivers of demand for real property were primarily global, the determinants of supply have been highly localized, suggesting that the interface between the global and the local is a fundamental catalyst of changes in the urban landscape.