21st Century (2000–present)

La Paz 2040 Plan

2014 · Bolivia · Latin America · Ecological, landscape-led, and resilience planning · Planned by Gobierno Autónomo Municipal de La Paz
La Paz territorial plan, Mapa 02: hierarchy of population centres across the municipality with the urban radius, sub-urban radius and the built-up 'mancha urbana'.
La Paz territorial plan, Mapa 02: hierarchy of population centres across the municipality with the urban radius, sub-urban radius and the built-up 'mancha urbana'. · © Gobierno Autónomo Municipal de La Paz — used with credit · Gobierno Autónomo Municipal de La Paz, Secretaría Municipal de Planificación para el Desarrollo — Plan Territorial de Desarrollo Integral del Municipio de La Paz, Mapa 02: Categorización de Centros Poblados

Core idea

Risk management + mobility

Why it matters

Mountain city resilience planning

Description

The La Paz 2040 Plan, prepared by the Gobierno Autónomo Municipal de La Paz around 2014, is a long-range integral development plan for Bolivia's seat of government, a city built in a steep Andean canyon. Its core concerns are risk management—responding to the landslides and flooding that repeatedly affect the city's slopes—alongside improved mobility, including the Mi Teleférico cable-car network linking La Paz with El Alto. The plan frames municipal investment across environmental, social and territorial dimensions to mid-century.

Significance

La Paz 2040 stands as an early Latin American example of resilience-led planning for a topographically extreme city, where geology and climate risk rather than growth projections structure the spatial strategy. Together with the cable-car system it has drawn international attention to how mountain cities can integrate hazard management, informal settlement upgrading and innovative transit.

What shaped it

Sources

Open it on the interactive timeline →
hub.toekom.st — History of Urbanism · an interactive timeline of 850 planned cities across 6,000 years.