Roberto Rodríguez-Rodríguez

Given that urban mobility arises from the interaction between social and environmental conditions, this study constructs a Bayesian network to represent these relationships in David, Panama, using 500 georeferenced household surveys that recorded variables related to demographics, travel behavior, infrastructure, mobility patterns and perceptions of risk, safety, and vulnerability. The Bayesian network was built and validated through a consensus-driven hybrid procedure combining structural learning and expert knowledge, resulting in a directed acyclic graph (DAG) with 127 nodes and 189 arcs; and conditional probability tables (CPTs) were learned from data. The topology of the network was analyzed with Louvain community detection, revealing eleven subsystems that group household economy and mode choice, hydrometeorological mobility barriers, congestion, public-transport quality, and safety in school travel. The inferences show gender-based differences in the risk of harassment on public transport, higher perceived vulnerability on longer trips, and elevated stress among middle-aged drivers. The model highlights potential priority interventions such as reinforcing public-transport safety, promoting self-contained trips, and encouraging short-distance active mobility, based on population perceptions. The resulting DAG functions as both an analytical and communication tool for urban management, is visually understandable to all stakeholders, and provides unprecedented evidence for Panama in a little-studied context.

This study evaluates pedestrian continuity in Panama City, analyzing disruptions and the spatial relationship between crossings and transit stations. Using GIS and field validation, pedestrian networks were assessed based on their continuity, defined by well-maintained sidewalks and marked crossings, and discontinuities, caused by absent sidewalks, commercial infrastructure, service stations, and unmarked crossings. Two urban zones with contrasting layouts were analyzed: Zone A, characterized by a regular grid structure, and Zone B, marked by irregular planning. Results indicate that 67.55% of the study network maintains pedestrian continuity. Additionally, 46.79% of the measured distances between bus stops and formal pedestrian crossings exceed 100 m. The average length of continuous paths is 73.37 m in Zone A and 45.60 m in Zone B. Encroachments by businesses are the primary cause of fragmentation, and the study reflects an important impact of car-oriented urban infrastructures on discontinuities, such as service stations. These stations cause average disruptions of 34.69 m per station in Zone B and 27.56 m in Zone A. The research highlights the need for urban planning strategies to ensure pedestrian continuity, particularly in fragmented urban grids, and underscores the importance of an in-depth consideration of continuity in pedestrian network characterization studies.

The province of Coclé is in the central zone of the Republic of Panama but lacks development of the road network. In order to assess the spatial analysis of territorial accessibility and connectivity, the methodology of this study was divided into three stages: determination of the working scenario, data acquisition, and spatial analyses. The data acquisition includes the GIS development and the field work for GIS validation. Within the province of Coclé, 19.55% of the population lives more than 500 m away from the nearest paved road, with the distance of the town farthest away from the nearest paved road being 36 km, which leads to different levels of accessibility and connectivity in this province. This study of the spatial analysis of connectivity and territorial accessibility sheds light on how the expansion of the road network affects access to health services and education.

El presente artículo pretende investigar y estudiar el regionalismo político-ideológico en el continente americano enfocado en los distintos procesos y estructuras que caracterizan la regionalización política, con el objetivo de conocer los patrones ideológicos que alimentan la evolución de las tendencias políticas que marcan el proceso de integración. La investigación se basó en una metodología de tipo descriptiva y cualitativa empleando un método documental. El regionalismo político-ideológico americano de las últimas tres décadas ha abierto un nuevo camino en la inserción de la región en el sistema internacional, no obstante, presenta profundas divisiones que responden a claras facciones políticas que siguen patrones ideológicos ligados a los intereses de los gobiernos de turno de los Estados. En el caso de la República de Panamá, a pesar de que ha ayudado a la construcción del regionalismo político e ideológico de la región, en las últimas décadas se ha apegado estratégicamente a prácticas multilateralistas para lograr propósitos soberanos. Se concluye que la construcción del regionalismo político-ideológico se caracteriza por esbozar tendencias dinámicas y claramente definidas, aunque la integración en la misma tiende a ser asimétrica y distante de construir bloques sólidamente cohesionados. Finalmente, la cooperación y el multilateralismo surgen como aliados para la búsqueda de consensos regionales y despolitizar la integración, utilizando la política como la base para lograr objetivos y las ideologías como el enlace para llegar a acuerdos.