My passport says I’m writing this column from Panama, the country, not the city in the Florida panhandle. A quick auto trip to the old Panama Canal Zone to see the boats crossing the isthmus confirms I’m in the right country.
Yet, I get confused when I look all across the city. The skyline is much like that of Miami between the Rickenbacker Causeway and the MacArthur Causeway, where dozens of cranes signal upward growing skyscrapers. If Miami’s real estate boom still shows growth in buildings to house offices and homes for new urbanites, despite a recession in the overall market, Panama is heading only in one direction. Upward! Forever upward! The sky is the limit!
All this in a city of little over a million people; one in three Panamanians live in the capital or its nearby suburbs.
The signs of the building booms are everywhere.