Latin America’s Large-Scale Urban Challenges: Development Failures and Public Service Inequalities in Lima, Peru

Abstract

Beginning in the early 1990s, neoliberalizing reforms have significantly impacted the urban space of Lima in terms of an increase in business activities and the intensification of sociospatial asymmetries. Considering the modernization of urban political economy along neoliberal lines as an important dimension of contemporary disputes, this paper treats urban neoliberalism as a lived experience shaped by multiple sociospatial interactions, politico-ecological tensions and creative reactions. For instance, uneven performance of public water services across social groups and different urban zones seems to be consistent with the nature of neoliberal urbanization, in that the persistence of inequalities represents an active mechanism for the functioning of economy, politics and society according to market-friendly priorities. In that context, the marginalized, low-income urban periphery is the main space where promises, protests and dissatisfaction with neoliberalized public services occur, and actively contribute to the reconfiguration and contestation of the neoliberal megacity.