Keeping memory alive while looking at the future

Needs and problems for balanced development

Panama is a dynamic and enterprising state, open to new commercial scenarios, economic integration, and diversification of its goods and services, but also to benefitting from the positive experience of other nations. The nation shows the vitality inherent to its context, stimulating innovative solutions for old problems. The principal challenge is to achieve rapid growth, improving the quality of life of residents and the visitor experience while safeguarding history, traditions, multiculturalism and the physical testimony of the past, but also to promote new architectural, engineering and artistic solutions that will themselves reach the level of national history. The tasks involve a set of variables that are not always easy to reconcile: social obligations; recovery of the nation’s identity, material and immaterial heritage; international relations and private interests; new technologies and ethics, are all elements that must co-exist and be integrated. The objective is to reach an equilibrium between the different aspects and actors in this process.