The Petro-City Paradox: Maracaibo and the Failure of Imperial Urbanism
Dubbed as “the Venice of the West” by 16th-century Spanish colonizers, Maracaibo was cleverly shaped by an ingenious balance with the surrounding lake, using local materials and durable architecture. Today, it stands as the bleak symbol of imperial urbanism.
The story of Maracaibo’s decline is inscribed in its materials. Where once wood and reed worked in harmony with the lake, concrete, steel, and glass have created a “thermal cage.” This radical shift was driven by the large-scale exploitation of oil and gas, and the city now depends entirely on a failing electrical grid.
How did a city so rich in natural and energy ressources turn into an unlivable heat trap? This article examines Maracaibo’s transformation, from its original harmony to deep structural maladaptation, trapped in a development model built for industry at the expense of its residents.
At the Beginning: A Natural Balance
When the first colonizers arrived at Maracaibo, they found a harmonious lake-based way of life. Wooden mangrove pilings, driven into the shallow waters of the lake, supported the houses, palafitos, which were sometimes connected by wooden walkways. Roofs were woven from palm leaves, and walls of reeds or cactus provided natural insulation. Cool air from the lake’s breezes kept the houses comfortable, while the currents naturally helped cleanse the living spaces.
Tar that seeped to the surface of the lake was used "to waterproof their roofs, seal baskets, caulk their boats, light torches, trap animals, and in some cases cure various ailments." (The Enduring Legacy: Oil, Culture, and Society in Venezuela, Miguel Tinker Sala). This was the way of life for the region’s native peoples, such as the Añu, the “people of the water,” and the Wayuu.
Located in the northwest of Venezuela, at the mouth of the lake and not far from the Colombian border, the city of Maracaibo long served as a commercial hub for coffee and cocoa. At the beginning of the 20th century, with the discovery of the first oil field, the city’s development was set on a radically new course.
Black Gold Era
In 1922, the eruption of the Barroso II well in Cabimas marked a dramatic turning point. Oil gushed continuously at an estimated 100,000 barrels per day for nine days, revealing a massive reservoir beneath the ground. American oil companies quickly took notice. New infrastructure sprang up almost immediately to extract ever more oil at ever greater speed. It was Venezuela’s oil rush. Forests were cleared, swamps drained, and tropical terrain leveled to make way for wells, pipelines, and storage facilities. Oil slicks soon became a common sight on the lake, degrading its biodiversity in ways that would prove increasingly difficult to reverse.
The city’s rapid economic expansion triggered a population explosion, growing from 75,000 in 1925 to 235,000 by 1950. Unable to house the new waves of residents, Maracaibo’s housing stock became overstretched, with hotels and apartments overflowing.
The working conditions imposed by these companies highlighted how replaceable the workers were, and how plentiful they were. Workplace accidents were frequent and neither unions nor laws offered any protection. These conditions are vividly described by the Colombian physician César Uribe Piedrahita, who worked in the camps, as well as by Venezuelans Ramón Díaz Sánchez and Miguel Otero Silva.
To meet these new demands, the oil companies (then the region’s main employers) built entire neighborhoods dedicated to their elite employees, including expatriates, managers, and a few skilled workers. These enclosed districts, marking clear spatial segregation, included housing, shops, schools, healthcare centers, and recreational facilities. According to the Venezuelan author and scholar Miguel Tinker Sala, the cultural biases of these foreigners prevented them from recognizing the city’s diversity, imposing their own needs, far removed from local realities, and claiming full credit for its modernization.
The city’s internationalization and the arrival of affluent residents actually deepened existing inequalities, triggering rapid, unplanned urbanization and driving up costs, real estate speculation, and the proliferation of informal settlements.
Urban Transformation & Concrete Trap
As the oil industry expanded, construction materials in Maracaibo changed radically, reflecting the demographic pressures, social hierarchies, and the importation of foreign urban models.
Reinforced concrete gradually became the dominant material for institutional buildings, collective housing, and prestigious infrastructure. It allowed high-rise construction, rapid densification, and the display of a modernity inspired by North American standards. In a city where temperatures frequently exceed 35°C, making it one of the hottest urban centers in Latin America, reinforced concrete transforms the built environment into a heat trap. Its high thermal mass, often combined with poorly ventilated stone facades and large glass surfaces, intensifies indoor heat in the already hot and humid climate. The city, once cooled naturally by the lake and adapted to its surroundings, gradually became dependent on air conditioning and the electrical grid to remain habitable.
Informal settlements often appeared as a way to address the housing shortage. The first homes were made from readily available, improvised materials: wood planks, cardboard, scrap metal, and sometimes industrial waste from oil production. Corrugated metal roofs provided quick shelter but also increased indoor heat, worsening conditions in these already vulnerable neighborhoods. Over the time, these temporary structures evolved over time. Once the land was occupied, they gradually replaced the thin walls with brick and cement mortar. This process of consolidation was not only a structural necessity, it also served as a strategy for urban and social legitimacy, allowing inhabitants to assert their right to use (and eventually own) the land.
During decades, the Venezuelan Government mostly left urban development to the oil companies before gradually taking back control. This takeover was marked by the construction of major infrastructure, such as the iconic General Rafael Urdaneta Bridge, a symbol of power and modernity. It reinforced concrete social housing, and the retroactive regularization of some informal neighborhoods.
However, this formalization often reproduced the same material and climatic logics: soil mineralization, little consideration for the local climate, and increased dependence on energy systems, thus perpetuating the vulnerabilities inherited from the oil era. What had been built on the oil-driven model thus depended on international (North American) flows and foreign components, leaving its survival both vulnerable and fully dependent.
Social & Environnemental Impacts
Since the 2010s, U.S. sanctions against Venezuela struck a decisive blow to Maracaibo’s already fragile economy. Transactions with oil companies and foreign suppliers became prohibited. Beyond removing the region’s main employers, these restrictions also cut access to spare parts for power plants, water treatment equipment, and imported construction materials. The direct consequence: power and water outages intensified, making the city even more reliant on an already fragile network and compromising both public health and environmental management.
Among the many problems the city now faces are emerging climatic challenges, suffering the full impact of its structural maladaptation. While vernacular, and later, Spanish colonial, architecture was adapted to the hot environment, American-style concrete buildings, though symbols of innovation and modernity, trapped residents in a cycle of dependence on unstable energy. Deprived of electricity, homes become unlivable, and energy poverty has become widespread.
In 2015, the city government even announced its intention to transform Maracaibo and implement a sustainable policy based on the city’s natural resources.
But what was a technical mistake decades ago now drives a major public health and environmental crisis. Urbanization without proper drainage and construction on cañadas has heightened the risk of flooding. These natural waterways, originally meant to drain the city into the lake, have been paved over or clogged with waste and informal structures, turning every tropical rain into instant floods. Wastewater then flows into the desembocaduras along the coast, spreading diseases such as dengue and cholera while increasing pollution in the lake. On top of this, corrosion in the pipelines used for oil pumping constantly leaks petroleum into the lake. The growth of verdin, a toxic algal bloom fueled by the mix of oil residues and untreated wastewate, has marked the end of traditional fishing, which had been a primary source of income for residents following forced deindustrialization.
A City in Flight
Unlike other lakefront cities also built around the oil industry, Maracaibo initially had the capacity to absorb this sudden influx, thanks to its history as a port and commercial hub, with infrastructure already in place. Yet imperial-style urban planning ultimately overwhelmed the city, focused on exploiting its resources in ways that could have ensured a prosperous economy. Victim of its own commerce, Maracaibo, once capable of providing jobs and stability for its residents, has become a city people leave, driving a mass departure.
By 2024, the UNHCR and the R4V platform estimate that nearly 7.9 million Venezuelans live abroad, up from just 700,000 in 2015. People abroad then support their families back home, fostering transactions in U.S. dollars. With the bolívar now highly unstable, the American petro-dollar has taken root in the city, marking a loss of monetary sovereignty and increasing the social gap between those with means and opportunities and those without.
Trapped by Its Past
Finally, Maracaibo tells the story of a city built by and for the oil industry, turned into a platform serving North American interests, and then left on its own. Once meant to be a symbol of Venezuelan modernity, it now stands as the peak of imperial-style urban planning. The crisis hitting the city is not just economic or political, it is rooted in the physical mismatch of its built environment. Poor governance and corruption started the decline, and economic sanctions acted as a fast accelerator, cutting off the resources needed for the city to sustain itself. The city’s ultimate paradox lies in its attempt at independence: the one that tried to free itself from foreign control is now trapped by dollarization and a dependence on unstable energy. Maracaibo remains a tragic witness to an urban model that, by ignoring its own climate and local realities, has condemned itself.