In Bolivia, urbanisation increasingly takes place in peri-urban settings situated outside the boundaries of cities. Unlike previous research that considers peri-urban developments such as rural-to-urban land use transitions to be characterised by state absence and little regulation and planning, this article demonstrates that such developments occur precisely because of the presence of particular multi-scalar governance configurations. Drawing on case study material from peri-urban La Paz, the article demonstrates how legislative reforms by Bolivia’s national government on decentralisation and municipal delineation, which failed to establish clear jurisdictional boundaries, create a situation of hyperregulation whereby multiple local authorities claim political control over the same territory by deploying distinct and at times conflicting, legal and planning frameworks. While hyperregulation enables a loose coalition of elite actors, including government authorities, resident leaders of peri-urban settlements and private sector representatives, to advance specific political and socio-economic interests, it puts ordinary residents in a situation of permanent uncertainty. The article contributes to and further nuances conceptual debates on calculated informality which uncover how states deliberately create legally ambiguous systems to facilitate speculative urban developments. Unlike previous studies which highlight that this is mainly achieved through state engineering, and particularly by suspending or violating the law, this article demonstrates that legal ambiguity and irregularity can also be generated through multi-scalar governance configurations that (1) involve a number of elite actors, including state authorities but also private sector and civil society representatives and (2) create a situation in which different regulatory systems co-exist without coordination.

在玻利维亚，城市化越来越多地发生在城市边界之外的城郊环境中。与之前的研究认为城郊发展（如农村向城市土地利用过渡）的特点是国家缺位和很少监管和规划，本文表明这种发展的发生恰恰是因为存在特定的多尺度治理配置. 本文借鉴拉巴斯郊区的案例研究材料，展示了玻利维亚国家政府在权力下放和城市划分方面的立法改革如何未能建立明确的管辖边界，从而造成过度监管的情况，多个地方当局声称对通过部署不同且有时相互冲突的同一领土，法律和规划框架。虽然过度监管使精英行动者（包括政府当局、城郊定居点的常驻领导人和私营部门代表）组成松散的联盟来推进特定的政治和社会经济利益，但它使普通居民处于永久不确定的境地。这篇文章对计算非正式性的概念辩论做出了贡献并进一步提出了细微差别，这些辩论揭示了国家如何故意创建法律上的模糊系统以促进投机性城市发展。与之前的研究强调这主要是通过国家工程，特别是通过暂停或违反法律来实现的不同，