The City of Knowledge (La Ciudad del Saber)

I've mentioned before that my host institution is a non-profit called FUNDAPROMAT (the Panamanian Foundation for the Promotion of Mathematics), and that the office is located in a nifty place called Ciudad del Saber ("City of Knowledge", website here: https://ciudaddelsaber.org/)

It turns out this place has a really fascinating history, having been lifted up (both literally and figuratively) in a bunch of ways. In fact, there's a small but very interesting museum on the campus that describes this history, and I'm going to try to do my best to summarize it here.

View inside the three-room museum in the City of Knowledge.

More than a century ago, as the canal was being built, one of the biggest and most difficult areas of excavation was through a large mountain: a portion called the Galliard Cut. All that dirt being excavated needed a place to go, and the engineers overseeing this operation sent the dirt via rail cars to a variety of places, including building out land for a causeway into the Pacific. But another place that they sent it was to an inland area near the canal that they named the Clayton Dump. This wasn't a dump in the sense of being a place for trash; rather it was a landfill – literally filling in the valleys and hills with land that had been excavated from between the mountains.

The Canal was finally completed in 1914, just as World War I was breaking out. The Americans controlled not only the canal, but a significant area of land on either side of the canal, and for almost 100 years, it was the United States that ran the canal. The US built Fort Clayton on the site of this former landfill, a place where the US Army and various canal workers would be stationed, overlooking the Mira Flores locks.

The original layout of the base was in the form of a horseshoe. The architect was the same one who had finished the building for the administration in Balboa and Hospital Gorgas in Ancón. The design and development of the plans was charged not to the armed forces, but to the Building Division of the canal company.

In the decades that followed, the US presence in Panama – literally a presence that divided the country into two pieces – became increasingly contentious. In 1964, a group of Panamanian students attempted to plant Panamanian flags at Fort Clayton and the Balboa school.  Although their attempts were initially supported and supervised by members of the military, they were also rebuffed by the US workers. What started as a peaceful protest grew increasingly violent, and eventually three dozen or so Panamanians died, many from gunshot wounds (the exact number is still, a matter for some debate).  The streets in the current City of Knowledge bear the names of some of the students who died that day.

The small print under each street name says
Mártir de la Patria -- 9 de enero 1964
(Martyr of the homeland -- January 9, 1964)

That day sparked international difficulties for the US. The actions of the US soldiers were condemned in many places around the world, including with U.S. allies in Europe, and the Panamanian government became the first government ever to have the guts to cease diplomatic relations with the U.S.  The years that followed saw increasing revisions to US policy, and in 1977, Panamanian President Torrijos and US President Carter signed a treaty, promising that the canal would be returned to Panamanian control by the year 2000.

Here's the wording from the plaque below, translated (by me) into English.  The short version is that what happened next was a lovely modern-day equivalent to turning swords into plowshares, although in this case, it turned an army base into an intellectual hub.

In 1993 a group of Panamanian entrepreneurs conceived the idea of creating 

a Socratic Plaza within the places that were being returned, gaining government support 

the following year.

To carry out this initiative, they created in July 1995 the City of Knowledge Foundation, 

a private nonprofit entity that worked with a union of syndicates formed from 

representatives of various sectors of the Panamanian society and four Ministries of the State.

For the conceptual development of the project they realized a process of 

contributions and consultation with ample social participation, 

which came about with the help and assistance of UNESCO. The results of this process 

are synthesized or summarized in the 1996 document 

"Ciudad del Saber: a possible utopia".

In an early moment, they thought of Albrook as the site for this project; 

nevertheless a study of the facilities carried out by ARI in January 1996 

strongly recommended the location of Fort Clayton.

Hence was born a "Master Plan", focusing on issues of sustainability, community, and increasing the common knowledge. 

The Master Plan

• Identify areas and establish criteria for the conservation of heritage of this site.
• Ensure that more than 60% of the campus is preserved permanently as green areas.
• Establish areas of expansion and densification for the development of new activities related to the mission of the institution.
• Define appropriate land uses
• establish urban and environmental norms.
• Accompanied by a road plan, include walkways and new places to park. 
• Provide interventions in the grounds to better to improve environmental quality 

Nowadays, walking around the Ciudad Del Saber, you can't help but be struck by what a beautiful place it is.  There are beautiful grassy areas, level because of the history of this being a landfill, and green because the master plan preserves the spaces as green areas.

There are beautiful, airy buildings with lots of windows, a legacy partly of the US Fort Clayton days, and also because of deliberate new construction.

The building where my office is. 
This side, facing the street, has small windows.
The opposite side, facing the green park, is full of large windows.

The streets are all given names of students who died in the massacre in 1964 (the day of the martyrs). And lots of signs, in both English and Spanish, remind people of the legacy of the place, both what it had once been, and also what it is now.

Down the hill from this sign, in the distance,
you can see the tall buildings of the Mira Flores Locks.

Sustainability is definitely a "thing" here; there's no curbside recycling in the neighborhood I live in, but the Ciudad del Saber has highly visible trash sorting that allows you to recycle paper and cardboard (blue), plastic (green), cans (yellow), and "everything else" (todo lo demás).

The new construction is beautiful and also highly energy efficient. Here's an entrance to the plaza with a couple of shops, a food court, and beautiful open air seating with fountains and plants all around. It's a place that's LEED certified.

A lunch spot near the fountain, with a cat looking on.

There are hundreds (I'm guessing) of organizations with offices here, dealing with issues as wildly divergent as world hunger, emerging technologies, arts and humanities, and medicine.  I got to attend a "Conecta" -- a networking event -- with a panel on how businesses expand into niches within international markets.  (And I did indeed network, meeting a cool new hire at SENACYT, the Panamanian version of the U.S. NSF).  

Anyone you talk to who works here or visits here admires what a lovely place this is, and I feel pretty lucky to have an office on the campus.  I also really admire the way the history of the place is woven in to the current use, with acknowledgment of the hard times and without flinching, but also with compassion.