<p>The urban landscape is a human-altered habitat derived from natural or agricultural land and includes plants as its most visible biological component. Ornamental palms (Arecales: Arecaceae), vital in tropical urban contexts, contribute to biodiversity and provide essential ecosystem services. However, armored scale insects (Hemiptera: Diaspididae) can disrupt this balance as pests. We hypothesized that urban habitat characteristics influence armored scale insect abundance and regulation by natural enemies on palms in Neotropical urban environments. To test this, we sampled 30 palms (<i>Dypsis lutescens</i> and <i>Phoenix roebelenii</i>) across three cities in Costa Rica and quantified scale insect abundance, species diversity (Shannon index, H’), parasitism, and predation. Vegetational complexity, host availability and vegetation cover were measured. Generalized linear models were used to evaluate relationships between habitat characteristics, scale insect metrics, and natural enemy activity. Our study revealed that scale abundance decreased with increasing vegetational complexity, and total abundance was negatively correlated with scale diversity, indicating that heavily infested palms tended to be dominated by a few abundant taxa. Parasitism rates were consistently low, reflecting vulnerability of higher trophic levels to urban simplification, while overall natural enemy-mediated mortality increased with vegetational complexity. These findings emphasize the ecological value of strategic habitat management in Neotropical urban landscapes to balance pest pressure and natural regulation and the need for further research on how urbanization shapes scale insect abundance and diversity in underexplored biodiversity-rich regions like the Neotropics.</p>