This dissertation seeks to know the state of the role of public power in building resilience for the City of Praia, capital of Cape Verde, which in the last decades had a very rapid population and urban growth. The geographical situation of Cape Verde, makes the country subject to a diversity of environmental risks and vulnerabilities, is an arid country with strong irregularities of rain. More than half of the urban formation of City of Praia is from informal origin (spontaneous), and still today many need adequate infrastructure and healthy housing conditions. The urban design is characterized by plateaus cut by valleys (watercourses), where the planned neighborhood are in the plateaus and the spontaneous ones are located in the edges, that are in the valleys and basins. Residents of neighborhoods are predominantly low-class and with poor adaptive capacity, many build in areas whit environmental risk. From the state of the art knowledge about building a resilient city and the analysis of the laws, plans and projects that attend an updated the expansion of the city, this dissertation aims to conclude how did the urban laws, plans and projects respond or not to principles of a resilient city. The urban laws and plans in City of Praia are in agreement with what is meant by building a resilient city, however by a context of formation, the city today is in conditions contrary to a resilient city, as well as some urban intervention projects.