Univ., Habil.-Schr. u.d.T.: Meding, Holger M.: Wandel in Abhängigkeit--Köln, 2000, die Bildung von Staat und Nation in Panama.

Tesis doctoral--Ciencias económicas y sociales--Paris, Sorbona. / Bibliogr. p. 212-216.

Texte remanié de: Th. Ph. D.--Boston university, 1969. / Bibliogr. p. [333]-378.

This thesis investigates five types of informal and self-built settlements in Panama City, Panama. The major part of the thesis focuses on precedents that are related to personal experiences encountered while researching a question developed during an independent study course at Ball State University. These experiences are germane to the place I have resided for virtually, my whole life, at the outskirts of an informal settlement in Panama City -- Barriada Nueve de Enero -- along with my personal relationship with Mrs. Emilia, my family's domestic worker for more than thirteen years. In addition, the study of the five settlements will be accompanied by a set of minor design interventions that address immediate and local needs encountered while investigating each area. In a country where already more than half the population (56%) resides in urban centers, and approximately sixty thousand people live in informal settlements, one might ask: What do rural immigrants bring with them to the informal settlements? And, what are the connections found that relate to their past lives in the rural areas? According to the UN-Habitat report of 2008, in the developing world there are approximately 5 million people making thier trek each month to urban centers, and most of them end up squatting and self-building in some informal settlement, making them, as stated by Robert Neuwirth in Shadow Cities, "the largest builders of the housing world." If it is in fact, the 'precaristas - informal builders' and 'invasores - inavders' of the world who are shaping our current and future cities, should we not be more interested in their knowledge, lifestyles, and building techniques? This thesis does not aim to answer all the questions about informal settlements in Panama, but it does try to expose a reality and hopefully generate an understanding towards one city, and at least one informal settler contributing to the fast-growing informal building phenonmenon of the world. / Department of Architecture

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, 1998. / "May 1998." eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 221-225).

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-06, Section: B, page: 3460. Adviser: Carl S. Hacker. Includes bibliographical references.

Throughout most of the modern history of the Western hemisphere, explorers, engineers and merchants have been interested in finding or building a waterway that would connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. By the early part of the sixteenth century most of these people had settled their attention on the Central American Isthmus. Several major commercial nations showed an interest in the project at one time or another, including France, Spain, Great Britain and the United States. Serious attention to building a canal started in the late nineteenth century with two areas, southern Nicaragua and central Panama becoming the two most logical sites for canal construction. By the middle of the 1880's the United States had private interests trying to start a canal in Nicaragua, while· the end of that decade saw the formation of a French canal in Panama. The United States seemed committed to a Nicaraguan canal.as late as 1901, yet the U.S. government eventually bought a concession, interceded in a revolution and built a canal through Panama. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the major characters in the struggle to determine a canal route and to build a canal, and to investigate the role played by the several presidential commissions established to discern both the feasibility of any canal and in the final analysis determine which canal route would be the best. Special emphasis was paid to the Isthmian Canal Commission of 1899-1901, popularly known as the Walker Commission.