When people think of globalization as an urban phenomenon, they usually think of New York, London, and Tokyo—the command and control centers of the global economy. Yet most urban dwellers live in smaller cities and metropolitan areas with populations of fewer than 2 million residents. These smaller cities account for the majority of the global urban population growth of around 65 million people per year.

Smaller cities illustrate the tensions brought about by changes in the global economy. Neoliberal globalization, the increasing reliance on markets to drive economic development, has resulted in a particular set of urban forms in poor countries—a minority of economically successful residents inhabiting increasingly privileged spaces—while the poor are ever more marginalized both economically and socially. At the same time, global trends toward democratization and increased political participation have exacerbated tensions in cities where the majority faces limited economic options. Most observers know that markets create winners and losers and understand the ways in which neoliberal globalization increases the gulf between the rich and the poor. But there is less understanding of how neoliberal globalization is cast into the brick and mortar of cities in the developing world. The metropolitan area of La Paz-El Alto, Bolivia, provides an exemplary case that illustrates how globalization shapes cities and how these particular urban forms, in turn, threaten the political sustainability of neoliberal globalization.

La Paz, the seat of the national government, sits in a bowl below El Alto—literally “the heights”—in a fragmented metropolis of 1.6 million people. The twin cities have been aptly described as an indigenous urban center overlooking a colonial city. They dramatically demonstrate how social relations react to the historic constructions of the built environment. With increasing frequency over the past six years, growing inequalities resulting from neoliberal policies and expanding spaces for contestation have strained La Paz-El Alto’s social fabric to the point of eruption.

Although impoverished citizens in low-income countries can claim few advantages, the geography of the twin cities has dealt the poor a powerful hand. With its majority indigenous population sitting above La Paz, El Alto spreads out across the altiplano, the inter-Andean plateau. El Alto controls all but one of the roads that connect La Paz with the rest of the country. In a tradition that began with an indigenous siege in 1781, lead by Tupak Katari and Bartolina Sisa, residents of El Alto have regularly closed off roads and marched down the steep hills to the center of La Paz in protest of economic and social policies. In 2003 and again in 2005, this geographical advantage facilitated demonstrations that drew from powerful collective memories and a deep sense of marginalization and injustice to forge a movement that forced two successive presidents to resign.

Indigenous residents of El Alto, Bolivia march in the streets in March 2005. Tensions between the mostly indigenous El Alto and its bordering city La Paz have led to frequent protests of the Bolivian government's divisive economic and social policies. Photo courtesy Benjamin Kohl.

Like other parts of the global south, where urban population has increased over the past 50 years from about 300 million to about 2 billion people, La Paz-El Alto has grown exponentially. The entire metropolitan area had a population of 320,000 people in 1950—El Alto was then a neighborhood of only 11,000 and the site of an airport and factories that required more space than was available in the narrow La Paz valley. The city began to grow following the 1952 revolution that freed the majority indigenous rural population from bonded labor on large haciendas. But El Alto’s growth noticeably took off in the early 1980s due to droughts and then neoliberal economic policies imposed by the IMF and the World Bank. Peasants, who could not compete with the flood of imported agricultural goods when borders were opened, moved to the city. They were joined by thousands of miners who made their way to El Alto when President Victor Paz-Estenssoro closed the state mines that had formed the core of Bolivia’s economy since the Spanish conquest in 1986.

In 1988, with its population approaching half the size of La Paz, El Alto became a separate municipality, hoping its independence would improve its access to resources. Fifteen years later, El Alto roughly equaled La Paz in size and the young city continues to sprawl across the altiplano today. As in cities in other low income countries, 60 percent of El Alto’s population is under 25 and its workforce is mostly non-unionized, often maintaining direct ties to the countryside and holding a strong sense of indigenous identity.

These arrivals created a political culture in El Alto and La Paz’s marginal neighborhoods that combines aspects of trade unionism with traditional indigenous forms of land-based organization (ayllu) within a context of marked economic insecurity and social frustration. This instability is physical as well: demand for land near La Paz has led to the construction of adobe houses built on steep and unstable cliffs surrounding the city’s basin. Mudslides and flooding occur during the torrential downpours during the rainy season that runs from December to February. The marginalization of housing for the urban poor is common to other developing countries, with the 1999 mudslides in Caracas Venezuela that killed more than 30,000 people serving perhaps as the most tragic example.

In the last 20 years, La Paz has also expanded down the valley to the south, where, despite limited stable land, middle and upper-class subdivisions have blossomed. The southern zone is characterized by large, modern homes set behind fortified walls and surrounded by trees, open streets, paved roads, and pedestrian areas. Service workers from the surrounding hills and El Alto come down the hill first to build the houses of the rich and then to cook, clean, and repair them, allowing families to reproduce the lifestyle of global elites. The area houses most of the international diplomatic corps as well as exclusive American, German, and French schools, along with the services found in international and elite enclaves throughout the developing world.

These conditions in the southern zone of La Paz are in sharp contrast with neighborhoods in El Alto, which are characterized by congested streets, unpaved sidewalks, low rise buildings in varying degrees of completion, and inadequate drainage. Fifty-four percent of El Alto residents rely on outdoor plumbing for access to water. In general, the built environment of La Paz reflects years of public investment. El Alto’s limited physical infrastructure, on the other hand, proclaims a city that outgrew the municipal government’s limited resources and ability to provide basic public services.