Categoría: ENGLISH

Meeting Aaron Swartz

Aaron Swartz (1986 – 2013) was a thinker, writer, programmer, entrepreneur, and hacktivist who helped shape the internet. Check out his accomplishments in Wikipedia. Aaron embodied the hacker mentality—fix everything.

A month ago, Aaron’s mother made this tweet remembering him. Someone replied with one of Aaron’s blog posts called: HOWTO: Be more productive. I was curious, so I read it. It was deep and insightful. I started to learn more, and then I went deep into the rabbit hole.

Since then, I have read over 40 of his blog posts, watched some of his YouTube videos, discovered new books, ideas, and developed new habits.

Next, I will talk about my favorite posts:

What is going on here?

Aaron explains the reason of being of his blog. For him, writing is a tool to shape yourself as an intellectual craftsman and develop your communication skills. His blog is about capturing experience and using them for reflection. It is also an opportunity of developing unconventional thoughts.

«…becoming a scientific thinker requires practice and writing is a powerful aid to reflection. So that’s what this blog is. I write here about thoughts I have, things I’m working on, stuff I’ve read, the experiences I’ve had, and so on…I don’t consider this writing, I consider this thinking… fundamentally, this blog is not for you, it’s for me. I hope that you enjoy it anyway.»

A Non-Programmer’s Apology

He goes into the philosophy of A Mathematician’s Apology, where the basic premise is to do what you are good at. Aaron finds himself in a paradox because he is a great programmer, but he prefers to be a ‘mediocre’ writer.

«And writing code, although it can be enjoyable, is hardly something I want to spend my life doing.
Perhaps, I fear, this decision deprives society of one great programmer in favor of one mediocre writer. And let’s not hide behind the cloak of uncertainty, let’s say we know that it does. Even so, I would make it. The writing is too important, the programming too unenjoyable.»

What It Means To Be An Intellectual

These are my favorite quotes:

«…not simply accept things as they are but to want to think about them, to understand them. To not be content to simply feel sad but to ask what sadness means. To not just get a bus pass but to think about the economic reasons getting a bus pass makes sense. I call this tendency the intellectual.»

«Language is the medium of thought, and so it’s no surprise that someone who spends a lot of time thinking spends a lot of time thinking about how to communicate their thoughts as well. And indeed, all the intellectuals that come to mind write, not because they have to or get paid to, but simply for its own sake. What good is thinking if you can’t share?»

I love to understand how stuff works and share it with people. My internet experiments make it evident I am always trying to communicate better.

A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine was trying to describe me. He said I was a «cool geek»; because I studied a lot and was good with people. I understood what he was trying to say, and I felt proud. Now, because of this blog post, I can suggest a better description, an intellectual. The funny thing is that word ‘intelectual’ is not used in Spanish. We should dust off that word and make it aspirational.

HOWTO: Be more productive

Some of his tips:

  • Works on important problems.
  • Create lists.
  • Make more high-quality time by not going to school or work.
  • Carry a pocket notebook.
  • Avoid interruptions.
  • Listen to your body.
  • Talk to cheerful people.
  • Simplify problems.
  • Convince yourself your work is fun.

He was friends with Paul Graham. Imagine having PG as a friend; that is a high-leverage friendship.

Believe you can change

He explains Carol Dweck’s study about children with fixed mindset vs. growth mindset and how it can be transformed. This transformation is the essence of his series Raw Nerve. A good habit is to see ourselves objectively and find new areas where we have a fixed mindset so we can transform it.

HOWTO: Read more books

«I’ve read a hundred books a year for the past couple years. Last time I mentioned this, a couple of people asked how I could read so many books. Do I read unusually quickly? Do I spend an unusual amount of time reading? I did a simple calculation: The average person spends 1704 hours a year watching TV. If the average reading rate is 250 words per minute and the average book is 180,000 words, then that’s 142 books a year. To my surprise, I wasn’t reading nearly enough books. So I’ve taken some steps to read more:»

You can find his top recommendations in his Book Reviews. Unfortunately, the reviews are full of broken links. An example of what you will find in his compilation of yearly book reviews:

44. The Inner Game of Tennis by Timothy Gallwey

This book touched me deeply and made me rethink the entire way I approached life; it’s about vastly more than just tennis. I can’t really describe it, but I can recommend this video with Alan Kay and the author that will blow your mind.

It is about hacking the process of learning. Please, do yourself a favor and watch the video in the link above (repeated here). It blew my mind.

I will try to read the books he loved the most so I can Stand on the Shoulder of Giants.

Something I learned from his reviews was to pay attention to the writing skills of the author. I must write more to fine-tune my calibration.

I share many interests with Aaron. But, one that surprised me was his interest in urbanism. He read many books on it. Robert Caro wrote one of his favorite nonfiction book, The Power Broker. It is the biography of Robert Moses, a public official who promoted car-dependent growth in New York. 

Aaron liked walkable urbanism. He said so throughout many essays. One example:

“All the apartments seemed to be on the floor above the normal street life; the two deeply intertwingled; just the way I like it. (See The Death and Life of Great American Cities for more reasons.)”

He is referring to the book of Jane Jacobs. She was one of the most influential people in favor of walkable, mixed-use urbanism in New York.

I also saw his documentary: The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz, which you can find free on YouTube. In it, they interview Aaron’s family, his girlfriends, his lawyer, and they show snippets of Aaron’s videos. Late in the documentary, they talk about his «crime» of downloading millions of scientific journals. Jail time was inevitable—the pressure was overwhelming—so he committed suicide. When this subject came on the documentary, the creator of the World Wide Web said:

Aaron is dead.
Wanderers in this crazy world,
we have lost a mentor, a wise elder.
Hackers for right, we are one down,
we have lost one of our own.
Nurturers, carers, listeners,
feeders, parents all,
we have lost a child.
Let us all weep.

– Tim Berners-Lee

When Tim was three sentences in, I shed tears. I got up, went into the bathroom, looked at myself in the mirror, and sobbed for a while. I pulled myself together and went back to the couch. I continued. Two seconds in, Tim finished with let us all weep, I started crying convulsively.

I met Aaron Swartz 7 years after his death, and I feel like I lost a close friend. I am in shock at how I could develop such an emotional connection. That is the power of good, authentic writing.

He makes me want to be a better person. After learning about him I am hopeful and sad. Hopeful because there must be many people like him around. Sad because I have a few relationships with people like him.

His blog and style struck a chord. They are nonfiction, clearly written, few paragraphs, and focused on insights he has learned about life. It is an inspiration for my blog.

How can someone be so wise from such a young age? How can we create more people like that? What else would he have done?

Lawrence Lessing, his friend, and mentor tells us what he valued professionally: a corrupt-free government. The following is a quote from this interview:

Aaron trapped me into giving up my work on internet law and copyright policy to take up work on political corruption. He came to me and said, “I don’t think you’re going to make any real progress on what you’re doing while there is still deep corruption in the way the government works.” At first, I tried to push him off. I said, “Aaron, it’s not my field as an academic.” Then he said, “Is it your field as a citizen?”

Lawrence Lessig

Let us follow his legacy and make the world a better place.

If you are interested in reading more, I recommend reading his blog. Start with The Archives.

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Book Review: Elon Musk’s Biography

Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

This book is a chronological story about the life of Elon Musk, one of the greatest businessmen of our generation. The book starts with his grandfather’s adventures. It follows on the family history up to Elon’s birth after the book zooms in every aspect of Elon, his childhood, his environment, his education, his relationships, and the founding of his companies Zip2, PayPal, SpaceX, and Tesla.

The author, Ashlee Vance, is an American business columnist focused in the tech world. He is the host of the Bloomberg series Hello Word, where he reports on the tech scene across the globe. For this book, he did many interviews with Elon, his family, friends, employees, ex-employees, investors, etc. The book is full of anecdotes and does not hold back when there is an adverse opinion, which, unsurprisingly, often comes from ex-employees and ex-wife. There are many quotes, stories, and emails straight from Elon too. Ashlee breaks down Elon’s motivations, action and then provides an excellent synthesis about why Elon Musk can do what he does.

This book is excellent for studying patterns of new innovative companies. It focuses on the chaos, drama, and uncertainty of a new venture. It also details Elon’s work ethic, his passion, resourcefulness, and the growth mindset necessary to execute essential things. 

Elon often reflects on past mistakes and explains his philosophies on company building. Some lessons learned are:

Summary

His grandfather, Haldeman, was an eccentric adventurer and a vital businessman who became a model for Elon. Haldeman had an airplane and was the first private pilot to get from Africa to Australia. After creating a fortune in Canada, he sold everything and moved to South Africa, where Elon was born in 1971. Elon says that he got his tolerance for risk from his grandfather. His grandmother was the first chiropractor in Canada. 

When he was young, according to his brother Kimbal, Elon usually read for up to 10 hours a day. Elon programmed and sold a space video game when he was 12 years old. There are some anecdotes of him being a strong advocate of solar energy. He has dedicated his life to the passions he had as a child. 

Science fiction and video games influence how he views himself, he says in the book, “Maybe I read too many comics as a kid. In the comics, it always seems like they are trying to save the world. It seemed like one should try to make the world a better place because the inverse makes no sense.”

At age 14, Musk had a full-on existential crisis, which is common amongst gifted people, but surprising in how young he was. He read a bunch of philosophies, and his conclusion was, “The really tough thing is figuring out what questions to ask. Once you figure out the question, then the answer is relatively easy. I came to the conclusion that really we should aspire to increase the scope and scale of human consciousness in order to better understand what questions to ask. The only thing that makes sense to do is strive for greater collective enlightenment.”

He had a really tough childhood. He was severely bullied in school and at home by his father. He credits his ability to handle the pressure. This resulted in him wanting to leave South Africa as soon as possible. He regarded the United States as the land of opportunity, so he returned to Canada to find a way to go to the US. He arrived in Canada at age 17. He studied there for two years at Queen’s University and then transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated from economics and physics. 

He interned in a startup in San Francisco and then moved there after graduation. He founded a company called Zip2, which was the first type of internet map. Subsequently, Compaq bought Zip2, and he got 22 million from the sale at age 27. With that, he founded X.com, which later merged with PayPal and ultimately took that name. He was fired as CEO while being the largest stakeholder. 

After that, he started to study Space and moved to Los Angeles because there was a mature aerospace industry with lots of talent, thus showing the importance of founding the right company in the right place with the right talent.

In the meanwhile, eBay bought PayPal for 1.5 billion, and Elon received 180 million of it at age 31. After that, he invested almost everything he had to SpaceX, Tesla, and SolarCity. Around 60% of this book is about the ups and downs of SpaceX and Tesla, where he was CEO and dedicated most of his time.

When Elon started to study the space industry, he was shocked about the low ambitions of NASA because they had no plan to go to Mars and old technology. Elon wanted to reignite their dreams and started to devise a project to send plants to Mars. After organizing many conferences with the top people in the industry, the plan evolved to create a company that reduced the cost of space exploration and eventually colonizes Mars.

SpaceX was founded in 2002. As expressed in their website, «SpaceX designs, manufactures and launches advanced rockets and spacecraft. The company was founded in 2002 to revolutionize space technology, with the ultimate goal of enabling people to live on other planets.» The book goes into detail on the first four launches, detailing the failure of the first three, the success of the fourth one, and how Elon managed the whole situation and pushed the company forward.

Tesla was founded one year later in 2003 with the mission to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy. At the beginning of the company, he got some cofounders, which he later fired, and explains how he got the talent needed to create electric technology, the development of the prototype, the roadster, and the problems that arose from taking the prototype to market. 

He was also Chairman and the largest stakeholder of SolarCity, which became the biggest installer of solar panels in the country. His cousins started it. The book barely talks about SolarCity.

Conclusion

Elon’s life story leaves you reflecting on the impact you are doing with your life. He makes anyone feel small, but that is a good feeling because he inspires you to think bigger, be more ambitious, and excited about the future.

This is one of the fastest books I have ever read. I highly recommend it. If you buy it, it would probably be best to buy it on kindle so you can update it without additional costs. 

Quotes that made me ponder 

“He opened up about the major fear keeping him up at night: namely that Google’s co-founder and CEO Larry Page might well have been building a fleet of artificial-intelligence-enhanced robots capable of destroying mankind. ‘I’m really worried about this,’ Musk said.» — Ashlee Vance

“Each one of his businesses is interconnected in the short term and the long term. Tesla makes battery packs that SolarCity can then sell to end customers. SolarCity supplies Tesla’s charging stations with solar panels, helping Tesla to provide free recharging to its drivers. Newly minted Model S owners regularly opt to begin living the Musk Lifestyle and outfit their homes with solar panels. Tesla and SpaceX help each other as well. They exchange knowledge around materials, manufacturing techniques, and the intricacies of operation factories that build so much stuff from the ground up.” — Ashlee Vance

“One former SpaceX executive described the working atmosphere as a perpetual-motion machine that runs on a weird mix of dissatisfaction and eternal hope. ‘It’s like he has everyone working on this car that is meant to get from Los Angeles to New York on one tank of gas. They will work on the car for a year and test all of its parts. Then, they set off for New York after that year, all of the Vice Presidents think privately the car will be lucky to get to Las Vegas. What ends up happening is that the car gets to New Mexico — twice as far as they expected — and Elon is still mad. He gets twice as much as anyone else out of people.’” — Ashlee Vance

“The way Elon talks about this is that you always need to start with the first principles of a problem. What is the physics of it? How much time will it take? How much will it cost? How much cheaper can I make it? There is this level of engineering and physics that you need to make judgments about what’s possible and interesting. Elon is unusual in that he knows that and he also knows business and organization and leadership and governmental issues.” — Larry Page, Co-founder of Google

“I don’t think we are doing a good job as a society deciding what things are really important to do. I think like we are just not educating people in this kind of general way. You should have a pretty broad engineering and scientific background. You should have some leadership training and a bit of MBA training or knowledge of how to run things and organize stuff and raise money. I don’t think most people are doing that, and it’s a big problem. Engineers are usually trained in a very fixed area. When you are able to think about all of these disciplines together, you kind of think differently and can dream of much crazier things and how they might work. I think that’s a real and important thing for the world. That’s how we make progress.” — Larry Page

“I think there are probably too many smart people pursuing Internet stuff, finance, and law. That is part of the reason why we haven’t seen as much innovation” — Elon Musk

“I would like to die thinking that humanity has a bright future. If we can solve sustainable energy and be well on our way to becoming a multi-planetary species with a self-sustaining civilization on another planter — to cope with a worst-case scenario happening and extinguishing human consciousness — then I think that would be really good.” — Elon Musk

“There is a fundamental problem with regulators. If a regulator agrees to change a rule and something bad happens, they could easily lose their career. Whereas if they change a rule and something good happens, they don’t even get a reward. So, it’s very asymmetric. It’s then very easy to understand why regulators resist changing the rules. It’s because there’s a big punishment on one side and no reward on the other. How would any rational person behave in such a scenario?” — Elon Musk

“The objective of a company should be — what delivers fundamental value. I think it’s important to look at things from a standpoint of what is actually the best thing for the economy.” — Elon Musk

Post-publication

Many things have happened since the publication of this book in 2015:

Additional Links

If you want a deep dive on Elon Musk and his companies, I highly recommend The Elon Musk Post Series on waitbutwhy.com.

I also recommend Joe Rogan’s conversation with Elon Musk in Sept 2018 and May 2020.

Imagine a new reality…

You have a new body and mind. Identityless. You possess the skill to learn and experiment rapidly. Your basic needs are covered. How should you act? After some confusion, you ask the fundamentally important question.

What is the purpose of life?

Expand consciousness and increase energy.

To pursue this journey, you must learn about:

  • Skills
  • habits
  • evolution
  • awareness
  • technology
  • the environment
  • the mind & body
  • the micro & macro
  • commerce, art & science
  • the past, present & future.

Next steps:

  1. Learn how to learn.
  2. Study the 3 best fundamental books on what you wish to learn about.
  3. Experiment, explain and apply to life.
  4. Keep iterating.
  5. Repeat with a new subject.

So, what is your purpose in life?

Align your everyday actions with it.

Yoga in India

At the end of a two week family trip to India, I made this video. I asked Varinder Singh, our tour guide about the most valuable message worth spreading.

Varinder is a college professor of history in India. He has a degree in meditation and the science of living. Here is the secret sauce of how to spread peace and happiness in our society.

Henry / Varinder

Can you tell me about yoga and meditation, your personal practice, and how it has impacted India?

Most people believe that yoga is just 1 thing, but we divide it into 3 parts.

The 1st is physical exercise. You do different postures while standing, lying, and sitting.

The 2nd is breathing exercises. According to Indian people, breathing exercises are more important than physical activities. Breathing exercises make us strong inside our bodies. We increase energy, and we believe that our body regenerates dead cells. We have millions of cells that are dead, and this is a chance to create new cells. There are 5 or 6 forms of breathing exercises.

The 3rd is meditation. Meditation is when you sit silently and concentrate your mind. When you start your practice, you can meditate for brief periods and expand those periods with constant practice. Meditation means absolutely no ideas or thoughts can come in your mind. It is the space between thoughts.

When you meditate, you will see stars and bright colors with your eyes closed. This means you are meditating. If this does not happen, you are not.

When you have advanced your practice, you will find a circle in front of your eyes. At the initial stages, the circle will be tiny. It will not be a 360 degrees circle. When this circle appears fully, that means you are going towards 100% meditation.

Sometimes when you are approaching full meditation, your eyes do rapid blinking. If you do not open your eyes, that means you are continuing the meditation. If you open your eyes, that means again you have to start again. This is a slight disturbance in your meditation. This is one kind of interference. When you feel this one, open your eyes and try again to meditate.

Henry Faarup Humbert en India
Everybody happy singing and dancing

Around 75% of India’s society does yoga. How has this impacted India?

I will give credit to our culture, religion, literature, traditions, and our family system. This has been our tradition for 4,000 years.

We live in an extended family system. People of different ages live in the same house and learn from they learn from their parents or grandparents. They teach us from childhood how to perform the various practices and exercises of yoga and meditation.

Most people have the concept that only rich people do yoga and meditation, but I do not agree. Poor or middle-class people do more yoga and meditation in comparison to high-class society. Why is that? High-class people are more busy multiplying their money. They have a materialistic lifestyle.

On the other hand, poor and middle-class people, even though they have limited resources, have a lot of time and are happy. They are satisfied with those limited resources, and with their time, they can do more yoga and meditation.

It is also related to health and medicine. Most people believe that if they do not do yoga and meditation, our body will be affected by some disease. When we are concerned, we go to doctors, and it is costly. Being hospitalized is expensive. Yoga and meditation help you balance your blood pressure, nervous system, digestive system, heartbeat, and metabolism.

How can other countries achieve similar results?

For a new country, I would say the media and, most importantly, classes in school. That will be the most effective because young boys and girls will learn in school and eventually teach their parents.

The government can also start awareness programs. The education department should take the initiative to introduce this in schools.

Has the government helped to make it widespread?

Oh yes. In most schools, you will find a yoga instructor. Every day there are 1 or 2 periods were students do yoga and meditation. There are many Non-Governmental Organizations too.

Gurus are also responsible. These gurus spread the message of yoga and meditation mainly through their ashrams.

Henry en India

You told me there was a television channel focused on yoga?

We have several channels. These channels invite many yoga instructors, so they have a chance to talk directly to the people through media. They talk about the benefits of yoga and meditation. This is how yoga is trendy in India.

Thank you for teaching me this. This journey was a fantastic experience.

Your welcome. Thanks. 🙏

P.D.: This is also a call to yogis, helping with the creation of this culture in Porta Norte. Let’s unite. 💪

Henry y Coach en India
Farewell at the airport. Good bye my friend.

Stefanos Polyzoides on Traditional Urbanism

Want to learn why modern cities are designed for cars and how to build beautiful walkable cities? Read on.

Stefanos Polyzoides is co-founder of the Congress for the New Urbanism and the architecture firm Moule & Polyzoides. He is Dean of the University of Notre Dame’s School of Architecture.

Stefanos has helped Porta Norte by refining the Code, revising plans, designing the town center, and mentoring the development team.

You can watch the conversation here.

Henry: Welcome, Stefanos. It is great to work with you in Panama again.

Stefanos: It’s always great to work with you and your excellent team. Let me start by saying that you have an exceptional Master Plan, designed by Duany Plater-Zyberk (DPZ).

Why is Panama City built for cars and not for people?

The car had massive adoption in the 1920s, and that started the modernist movement. That is why modernist principles are car-scaled, not human-scaled. Those principles were born in the International Congress of Modern Architecture (CIAM).

Panama imported sprawl from architecture firms in Miami. Thus, it introduces the urbanism of Miami, which is the most car-dependent urbanism in the United States. Panamanian leaders — even though they studied in great universities — have copied the wrong ideas. They have built a «modern» city that is comfortable for cars, but uncomfortable for people.

Suburban Sprawl in Miami
Sprawl in Miami

They have also built modernist buildings that look the same anywhere on Earth. They don’t respond to climate and disregard local culture. They have the same cold glass façade in the arctic, desert, and the tropics.

Old modernist buildings don’t age well. In some ways, that is why their price per square meter is much lower than those of Casco Viejo. Despite all this evidence, the majority of architecture schools still teach these ideas.

On the other hand, you have traditional towns responding to climate, culture, and public needs. The human race has built beautiful cities for thousands of years, with fewer resources. We must learn from them and continue the evolution process. Later, I will show you how.

What should be the inspiration for Porta Norte and Panama?

Humans understand that traditional urbanism works. Our ancestors have left us a rich legacy. We must learn from our past and use that information to create better places.

People love traditional urbanism. That is one reason why France and Spain are the most visited countries on Earth. People like to walk. It is no coincidence that tourists always go to walkable, traditional cities.

One great thing about traditional architecture is its flexibility. It adapts to new needs. For example, residents may use the same ground floor as a home, a shop to sell cookies, or an office to start a new business. Buildings evolve with people.

For inspiration, you must study the architectural DNA of Panama. By DNA, I mean the history of pre-car cities. You can explore Sevilla, Cartagena de Indias, and Casco Viejo.

Let’s talk about each one. 

In Sevilla, you can learn from the roots of Hispanic architecture in Spain’s warmer climates. Most of the ships that came to Panama started their journey from Sevilla. Sevilla’s architectural language influenced Casco Viejo; that is why they are similar in style. You can go to other beautiful cities of Andalucia like Málaga, Granada or Córdoba. Also, study different epochs in architecture like colonial, medieval, renaissance, or baroque. 

Sevilla Street
Sevilla

Cartagena de Indias is a majestic city where you can learn a lot. Let’s not forget that Panama originally was a forgotten province of Colombia, so it did not have a sophisticated architecture. Study it. It is only one hour away by plane. You will find a much wider variety of architecture with a tropical climate.

Street in Cartagena de Indias
Cartagena de Indias

Casco Viejo is small but beautiful and has the most abundant legacy of traditional architecture in Panamá. It was forgotten for decades and was on the verge of demolition. In a way, this was good because people living there had no money to demolish buildings or renovate them into modernism. It bought time to put in place rules for preservation. Renovations for all public spaces and most buildings are finished. The change is so dramatic that it has the most expensive real estate in the city. It has started a revolution in real estate.

Street in Casco Viejo
Casco Viejo

In Porta Norte, you should use Casco Viejo as your main source of inspiration. You are adopting the slogan «El Nuevo Casco Viejo». That is brilliant because you are learning from the best of the past to produce a better future.

Street in Porta Norte
Porta Norte

Go to these places and study their squares, streets, buildings, construction techniques, etc. After that, you will have a much richer vocabulary and a more sophisticated language.

Something I enjoy is that Porta Norte is that it is a direct response to a classic new urbanism question:

If Casco Viejo works and has the highest real estate values in Panama, why not build more?

What advice would you give architects?

Stefanos Polyzoides with Edward McGrath
Edward McGrath and Stefanos Polyzoides

The purpose of listening to Mozart is not about glorifying him but celebrating the human race. When you hear the 9th symphony, do you say, «oh my God, Beethoven was a genius?» No. The first thing you do is take a deep breath and think, «my God, how could I be a human being and not know this?» It elevates the culture. 

It’s the same thing in architecture. I help create a building or a neighborhood, but I’m going to die in 20 years. I will leave behind a great legacy for humanity. We do this for our fellow humans, descendants, and other people who live 50 years from now. Everybody needs to understand themselves as being part of a grand obstacle race.

The second thing is that architecture is not independent of its setting. It is about responding to the context of a larger urban whole, whether it’s a neighborhood, a district, or a block. You need to understand architecture in the context of a block and the space between them. Architecture is dependent as opposed to independent of the world around it.

If you understand a city block, you will never design the façade and the back the same. You will know that buildings define public spaces.

You need to study how older buildings have responded to nature by making them comfortable in cold, warm, dry, or humid climate.

If you understand that architecture is dependent, then you can look at the Casco Viejo and say, «What am I learning here that’s special?»

How do you design traditional architecture?

The wrong, superficial, and quickest way of doing it is to copy a style like Mediterranean or French. This technique may succeed in the hand of a brilliant architect, but it often looks fake.

Let’s go over the order of decisions to design a building:

  1. Define the type: Know whether it is housing, offices, retail, a combination, etc. Let’s say it is a housing project.
  2. Study the context: Analyze the climate, fauna, flora, and what is going on around the lot. Use the topography as an advantage for parking, or to create views.
  3. Locate the parking: Parking is the first constraint. You need to hide the parking well. Try to put it on the lower side of the lot to reduce excavation.
  4. Locate the façade: It should be next to the main public space, such as a street, a plaza, or a park. The outer walls should follow the property line in a way that defines the street. You must be aware of the inside and the outside at all times.
  5. Define the shape: The building may vary in stories within the lot. Make the building increase in height if there are views.
  6. Revise private and public space: Make the buildings accessible from the outside. They should react to corners. When you follow the property line, it will be easy to form courtyards on the inside.
  7. Choose a style: After all this, now we are ready to give this building a style. You should have inspiration from local traditional architecture, so the style reacts to the local climate.
Henry Faarup, Stefanos Polyzoides and Edward McGrath

Refining the Plan

After you design this building, you can use it as a model to design other lots.

When you walk around Casco Viejo, you must study the decisions made for each lot. You will begin to see patterns. You will learn that buildings are human-scaled and that their shape reacts to public spaces and nature.

It all ties together in a language that is derivative of the culture and climate. You’re not repeating Casco Viejo. You’re getting inspiration and interpreting it to transform it into new designs. It is about the evolution of language.

We can enhance our language by studying towns, buildings, and construction techniques of the past. Architects must see themselves as being part of the local language. The language of Casco Viejo is not the end of the Hispanic architecture.

Now, let’s be specific.

You need to observe how walls, columns, and rooms are logical components that emerge from the human body to provide function, comfort, and beauty.

Traditional buildings in the tropics have overhangs and balconies to protect pedestrians from the rain while giving outdoor space to residents.

Architecture in Casco Viejo
Balconies of Casco Viejo

One example is the windows. The height in windows is equal to the length between your waist and your raised hands. This way, you can call someone by waving your hands and hinge your upper body outside.

To show you what I mean, look at Mediterranean roof clay tiles. They were formed around a log or the maker’s thigh, resulting in their semi-cylindrical shape.

Materials are locally sourced to ease maintenance. Materials have a manageable size so that one person may build or fix anything.

We, as a society, have forgotten how to build this way. We must relearn this art. 

What is the role of public spaces?

Public spaces let people get together and advance their culture. There are two kinds: natural and human-made public spaces. 

Natural public spaces are rivers, mountains, greenways, etc. It is where wildlife thrives. It is for connecting with nature in its raw state. They are places where humans can reset by hiking or just contemplating nature.

Río María Prieta in Porta Norte
Riverwalk, Porta Norte

Human-made public spaces are plazas, parks, squares, etc. It is where humans get together; they are the living room of the community. In them, they can do art, music, festivals, play, and be more active in civic society.

Plaza Fundadores in Porta Norte
Plaza de los Fundadores, Porta Norte

In Panama, Casco Viejo has the most human-made public spaces. It is no coincidence it has the most vigorous culture in Panama. Public spaces lead to the evolution of culture within a community.

Right now, there are crimes against humanity on the edges of Panama City. Developers are clearing forests to build suburbs without public spaces. They are building car-oriented developments with parking in the front of buildings. In those suburbs, people will have no room for interaction or connecting with nature. Their residents will end up with an unhealthy lifestyle, a weak sense of belonging, and a dull culture.

In Porta Norte, you have a beautiful forest. Due to heavy rainfalls, you will end up developing around half of it. You also have many pedestrian plazas. The best of all is that you connect them to form a network of public spaces. 

You have a high quality of natural and human-made public spaces. These public spaces, combined with dense urbanism, create a vibrant place. Porta Norte is the kind of urbanism that should be at the heart of the new urbanism.

What is your advice to Porta Norte?

You have a remarkable master plan, leadership, and guidance. You work hard to build this place and are also pursuing this at personal economic risk — so you have skin in the game. So I am confident it will succeed.

One of the crucial questions to address is: how to avoid mistakes? 

Your most important task at this stage is assembling great people to contribute. Get developers who understand that it is not about them in the short term, but about them and others in the medium and long term. Ensure that architects get inspiration from the places we talked about and make them read the Code of Porta Norte.

Everybody must understand that the first steps are the most important ones. If you do it wrong, people will come to Porta Norte and say, «Is this what they meant?» And not like it. If you do it right, you will have an urbanism people love, gain ambassadors, and the development will speed up.

One promising thing is that Porta Norte is in the middle of a developed part of the city. It has significant people around it and a major highway going next to it. That means you can have a mixed-use pedestrian town center built there. 

Charrette of Market Plaza Porta Norte
Designing Market Plaza Porta Norte

You must also build a school in the beginning. Between the mixed-use town center and the school, you will have two anchors of attraction. With this, it will be much easier to convince people that there’s life here, and they should be part of it.

It is difficult to build these many buildings well from the start because it is Panama’s first time. I am here to help you with this.

You need a lot of guidance in the first phase, less on the second, and in the third one, you are by yourselves. It is like learning how to bicycle. You get extra wheels, and somebody helps you climb it and ride with you. Then you ride alone and take off the wheels. After some time, you ride to school by yourself. I am here to help everyone become the authority they need to be to get this right.

What is the future of Panama, and how does Porta Norte fit in it?

Projects like Porta Norte will redefine living in tropical cities and refine citizens’ desires. It will enable an active civic life and a healthier relationship with the environment.

I have worked in Panama for over a decade, and I know at least six new urbanist projects. Together, they are inspiring more walkable real estate developments.

It is depressing to live in a world that does not know how to build well. Gladly, humans have recognized their mistake and are changing cities from cars to people. It is hard to think beyond our lifetime, but these changes are slow and may take over 100 years.

Panama City’s car-oriented growth made the city chaotic. We are here in the middle of the city with a horrible view of the «modern» city, dreaming of a romantic traditional town.

Porta Norte is an integral part of the expansion of the city. Fortunately, the backward modernism movement has not trapped you.

As I have seen in other countries, Porta Norte will awaken the market with its traditional planning. It will excite young people and be very successful.

You have been a great mentor. Thank you.

You can watch the video of the conversation below:

Town Founders were real estate developers

We used to call them our founders, and we honored them by erecting their statues in our town squares. Today we just call them “developers.” — Andrés Duany, Cofounder, and leader of the New Urbanism. The urban planner of Porta Norte.

It is human nature to resist change. When we were cavemen, if something changed in our environment, it may mean death (intruders, animals, etc.). We have evolved to resist change.

Today, real estate development is one of the most tangible ways a society changes, so society tend to resist it.

Real estate developers of the past were called Town Founders. They were the primary protectors of towns from intruders, animals, etc. by building forts, moats, walls, residences, commerce, etc. Interests were aligned, hence the excellent reputation of “Town Founders”.

So, continuing our survival patterns of resisting change without the added incentive of our survival (we don’t have our life at stake anymore), society tends to resist new developments. For example, you live in a house in a low-density area. If a developer wants to build a high rise, the community will fight them. The residents do not want the added traffic, construction noise, pollution, and the workers for two years in their neighborhood. The developer wants his project built. Short-term interests are opposed. We tend to think lowly of people who degrade our quality of life, hence the bad reputation of “greedy developers”.

The long-term interests of the neighborhood and real estate developers are aligned. Increased density makes us less reliant on the car by making it feasible for new businesses to survive. Increased demand leads to more products and services offered nearby.

The job of our modern-day Town Founders, real estate developers, is not to protect our lives anymore but to create a vibrant town were economic life, health, community, and cultural life thrives. If developers do not provide any of these, by all means, resist!

If you think someone is doing an excellent job of founding a town or improving our cities, help or join them. 😉

Train computer skills

Learning to use your computer better is a high leverage task that almost no one does. When we learn how to use our computers better, we save time. Computer programs give you actual real-world superpowers where you can do analysis, calculations, and exploration.

Let’s say you trained 1 hour a day on how to use programs like Gmail, photoshop, google earth, excel, Wix, Salesforce, QuickBooks, etc. better. Let’s estimate this hour saves you 1 minute of work per day for the rest of your life through automating processes or making you more agile using programs. It also makes you more productive. If you restrict your computer to work days, then you use your computer around 240 days per year, which gives you 240 minutes saved per year, which translates to 6 hours of work saved.

Every hour invested in training saves 6 hours of work within the next year.

Sometimes the result of the training might be zero minutes saved, but other times it may be 30 minutes saved or more. Every day you train, you learn how to learn a computer program better, so minutes saved per day or productivity should increase. The lower boundary of minutes saved per year is 0, and the upper limit is extremely high and growing.

What other tasks are as high leverage? Please, enlighten me.

How do you fill the last sentence?

Where are you?
How can I capture you?
I think to have graced it merely a handful of times
Is it love? Intimacy? Purpose? Religion? More?

Only you have the power to emulate ecstasy
We seek knowledge to try and acquire utter happiness,
But this is the same reason why we can’t
How can someone be completely content?
Is it only by temporary stretches of time?

The most thrilling experience?
To catch something perceived uncatchable
Thriving to seize it causes genuine fulfillment
But…what happens when you do?

Is the root of _____ eternal pursuit?

I wrote this poem in my last semester of college — in 2012. I was thinking a lot about what I should do next. You can find my answer in the link to this post.