Is Panama City the new Dubai? Is Dubai the old Panama? The answer to both these questions is probably “shut the F up.” But there is a common and effervescent relationship between these two places and it goes beyond the fact that working class citizens in both cities consume large amounts of rice.

In Dubai, a huge gale of development established what might be the most radical and consolidated growth of my lifetime. And so drawing comparisons with Panama’s recent growth isn’t all that unfair. As you might have guessed, the conundrum lies not in drawing the analogy but the light in which people like to consider it. And with this in mind, I conducted a small survey in the span of 45 minutes.

Experience One

The subject: “Carlos” is of Indian descent, Panamanian nationality, and speaks perfect English, Spanish, and standard Hindi. He holds a medium level job with the Panamanian government, which requires him to travel with the Vice President on diplomatic missions as an attaché.

Answer: “Fuck dude, I think Panama is the next Dubai. I mean, look at our skyline and our towers. Our buildings are huge man. Next thing you know, we’ll be building one of those indoor ski slopes. I don’t know if you saw but we’re also getting one of those man-made archipelagos. We’re getting it dude! My dad just put down a deposit for a lot.”

Experience Two:

The subject: Marvin, a taxi driver in Panama City who used to travel to Europe working in the beverage industry. He has never been to Dubai but says it is very modern and that women there must be hot with the “all those sheets covering their heads.”

Answer: “I would have to say yes, Panama is the Dubai of the Americas. It has all the international people and cultures. Dubai has oil and we have the Panama Canal. That and we almost had the tallest building in Latin America.” According to Marvin, Panama has better looking women and cheaper beer but it would benefit from some of those man made islands.

Experience Three:

The subject: Mari, thirty-three, works in real estate and has actually been quoted in an international news publication stating excitedly, “Panama might very well be the next Dubai.”

Answer: Mari was the only one that seemed skeptical of my motives. At one point, she asked, “are you actually curious for my opinion or are you just going to be an asshole?” Mari may not be a development expert, but that doesn’t mean she’s not perceptive. “I can give you a number of reasons why Panama is the next Dubai. But mainly it is an international hub of commerce,” she said, which is true. I asked Mari if being compared to Dubai is a good thing or a bad thing and she said it was undoubtedly good. “Lofty goals,” she called it.

Whether Panama is the next Dubai is of far less importance than the aspiration with which it is compared. Do you think Dubai is a good model for Panama to follow?

 

Marvin orders a café con leche and a chicken empanada. We are sitting at Boulevard Café in Panama City amongst a surprisingly large lot of other full-bodied men who look just like him. They all wear suits, have drivers waiting outside, and speak in loud, demonstrative terms. They are all exactly like Marvin except I can pretty much guarantee none of them are explaining how it feels to be part of a weird country—with freakish growth—that has somehow become one of the world’s most gossiped-about destinations.

In the world of developmental psychology, there is something called the moderate novelty principle, which suggests that the best conditions for acceptance – granted, a very broad term – occur when there is a moderate degree of novelty. This is to say, conditions new enough to spark interest but not so foreign as to be confusing or overwhelming. This principle fundamentally explains the trends, tastes, and preferences of human beings both in the past and the present. Not ironically, it’s also my primary evidence for why Panama will continue to grow exponentially.

Years ago I arrived in the late afternoon and my first real experience of Panama City came that evening when Casey and I wandered around El Cangrejo and past Panama’s first Las Vegas style casino and hotel, The Veneto, which is now (of course it wasn’t back then) a Wyndham Grand Hotel. The entrance was guarded by two giant Egyptian tombs and in one area all the waiters were wearing silver garb. Above the blackjack tables if I remember correctly, the ceiling had been painted with birds and clouds and a network of small, twinkling constellations to remind us, I suppose, of the warm Venetian night. 

In the mid-nineties, a terrible mistake was made and my high school organized a trip to Colonial Williamsburg for somewhere around fifty students including myself. While most of my fellow students spent the majority of their afternoons stealing anything that wasn’t bolted down to the floor, I remember being mystified by the Williamsburg concept as a whole.

It was about five PM as the sun was setting over the Bridge of the Americas that I watched four squatters smoke a massive blunt in an abandoned building in Casco Viejo. This may sound dangerous should I have been down there with him, like standing behind a big rock or interviewing them for some sort of documentary.

But as things were, I observed the scene from about a hundred feet up atop my friend Joel’s roof. Watching them, I thought of my season ticket in the Bernabeu Stadium, where Real Madrid plays all its home games. My seat was the very furthest possible from the field, which is to say my back was up against the stadium’s outside wall. I remember looking down on the players from our way up there. We felt like little astronauts looking down at the earth.

From Joel’s roof you can also see a giant banana tree, with large droopy leaves that has sprouted from a neglected building. In its shade, someone has set up a makeshift sleeping area with umbrellas, plastic shower curtains for privacy, and, of all things, a dining room table.

Just as I was trying to see whether the man lying there was sleeping or dead, a gorgeous yellow bird landed on the railing several feet next to me. About the size of a teenage hawk, the brilliant yellow bird chirped a bit then went on to eat the small worm that hung from the side of its mouth. I admired his ability to eat on the go, as even something as simple as a burrito in the car tends to stifel my appetite.

The days may be close to long gone, but let's revisit them for a moment. Panama was just beginning to make a splash and the online world was abuzz with its varying forms of Panaphernalia: vacation ads, real estate banners, retirement guides. Everything Panama was rosy, perfect, and pristine. The few resources that challenged its paradisiacal stereotype tended to overcompensate and thus come off as extremists. If you were researching Panama around 2004, it would not be unfair to say that there was about a 95% chance you'd stumble upon something cheery. This did wonders to get first timers in the door, but how would it help shape their ultimate opinion? 

In 2001, a new Ann Arbor-based technology company called DNA Software won a $1.5 Million dollar grant from the state of Michigan to develop better computer programs for scientists. The grant paid the small company in annual installments in exchange for preferred shares with no controlling interest. The story was every start-up company's dream. If this wasn't Easy Street, it was somewhere just around the corner.

(Panama) On the mid-April days leading up to the NFL draft of 1998, the coaching staff of the Indianapolis Colts and Bill Polian, the team's president, sat in their war room pouring over reels of footage. They broke down game tape through hundreds of hours of slow-mo video featuring two college all-stars, Peyton Manning from University of Tennessee and Ryan Leaf of Washington State. In college, both players had amassed a spectacular array of accomplishments.

Doing business in Panama. On paper, it's one of the nation's most celebrated allures: the ability, as a foreigner, to relocate, open up shop, and flourish in an emerging market. But there are of course downfalls to every pitch. There are differences between big and small business, well-connected entrepreneurs and newcomers, rich business owners and poor ones. What some like Dimitrios Svoliadopoulosm of Tropiland Blog are starting to reveal, is that the country's infrastructure for working, living, and conducting business may not be exactly what many were once led to believe.

It's sometimes ironic how stepping back from Panama allows one to focus more clearly on its nuances. Currently in the midst of a US-wide tour visiting friends I haven't seen in ages, I've come to some conclusions beyond how fat everyone has gotten. Life in the US, compared to Panama, used to be one of artificial excesses and costs. The prices, both literally and figuratively, of living or working or vacationing in exotic Panama were poles apart from doing so back home.

In summarizing the economic activity of Panama with regards to tourism and real estate, the past year has been marred by a substantial slowdown in both markets. Real estate agents who were once rolling in the dough started to experience a drought; hotels that were enjoying full occupancy began to take hits; service businesses saw a precipitous decline. The general gist was that while Panama industries weren't dying from the recession, they certainly weren't thriving either. But of late, a large percentage of the aforementioned seem to be experiencing a resurgence of sorts: a sharp blip on the radar due to, well, no one really knows exactly what.

Due in part to its geographics, the Caribbean archipelago of Bocas del Toro has evolved into something of a phenomenon in Panama: "the" stand-alone self-sustaining travelers destination. One could argue other hotspots are making strides, but in truth, no concentrated area within Panama's borders represents as much of a magnetic and complete tourism draw as does Bocas. The effects of such success - whether Bocas is sustainable, secure, investment-worthy, stable or truly unique - being what we set out to explore.

 

Thank god for the recession it is saving Casco. People have always said poor economic times are great for family, but they also are great for gentrification. Casco Viejo has been the hottest address in the city for some time. The bohemian lifestyle, eclectic cast of characters, underground artsy vibe, and chic eateries and bars have given Casco Viejo a truly international crossroads feel. 

This was the first real recession of my life and while I hear regularly of job-loss and ailing finances at home, in Panama I found myself relatively unimpressed by the magnitude of its fury. What I envisioned was a dustbowl of scraggly men panhandling and eating soup from a can. I remember the dot-com collapse, the accounting scandals, and September 11th attacks but being (for the most part) outside of the US for the current recession, I find myself describing Panama's reaction to the world economic crisis with nothing less than a sigh.

Hype and buzz have played a big role in Panama's reputation to date as an investment hotspot, retirement haven, and travel boutique. But now, with its main foreigner-focused industries facing the realities of the world economy, a new type is noise is drawing people near. It's the relocation bug, based around the allure that you can still today live, work, and invest in an environment that, well...doesn't suck. Amidst all this hype, we decided to demystify several of the main concerns people tend to mull over when considering a new place to live during times of crisis. In the time of the Great Depression, escaping the hard times wasn't as easy as a $300 flight to the tropics...

There are a number of blogs in Panama, including this one, which make projections about the future of the country: from real estate to tourism to overall development. It's hard though, without any concrete statistical evidence, to back up any of these claims primarily because the majority of government numbers are suspect, an imprecision which forces analysts to go solely by "feel." Do Panama's hotels feel full? Do real estate project feel like they're selling? Does it feel like people are still showing interest in Panama?

2008 for Panama was a record-setting year: real estate sales skyrocketed, tourism soared, the economy grew by unparalleled levels. Oppositely, 2008 brought some negative press such as a heightened corruption rating, increased poverty, and a near-busting real estate boom in the City. However, many experts were surprised to see most of Panama's industries with their nose above water in a time elsewhere in the world that many sectors had drowned with the surrounding crises.

How did the Panama real estate sector handle a large decrease in buyers? How did the government deal with a giant influx in foreigners? What is to come? Last year I wrote what I called the State of Affairs in Panama, 2008 which was my list of predictions in the real estate and tourism sectors for the upcoming year. I wrote the article New Years Eve 2007 and figured it'd be interesting to go back and evaluate my predictions, if nothing else, as a bolster to my forecast for 2009. I have posted below my 15 predictions along with an academic grade (on a scale of A+ to F) and reasoning to back the grade up. I didn't write this review from the lookout on Ancon hill as the picture might lead you to believe, but from the bowels of my office library, the setting was almost as dramatic.

It's a common sight in magazine features and online blogs, the developing Panama City skyline as a symbol of unbridled growth and development in Central America: it's the tangible synergy of a banking hub, a trade center, and budding tourism and real estate sectors all bundled together in an emerging nation. Articles plagued with words like expansion and progress make headlines both home and abroad, however in a time of such intense imaginings, some believe the fruition of Panama's vision to be a dubious castle in the sky.