Seen from Ecuador, Esmeraldas is a strategic city, yet a vulnerable one. The structure of its territory imbeds various regimes of accumulation, successively linked with the bana-na and the oil booms, and, more recently with tourism development. Each time, those booms framed different parts of the city: the Esmeraldas river embankments, the lower river Teaone valley, and the seafront – Balneario de Las Palmas. Each time, those evolu-tions escaped land-use planning, as well as control by the local actors. The main actors driving urban dynamics gathered foreign companies, the Ecuadorian state, the oil and energy-related sectors. Informal settlements were the rule, with no or limited investment in water and energy supply networks coming from the main actors already mentioned. This situation favoured a wide range of risks. They evolved in tune with urbanization pha-ses, with the accumulation regimes and the main political actors related. The paper sheds light on those dynamics and on the role official and late land-use planning plays.