The present thesis is inserted in the field of cities studies, which necessarily dialogues with frontier themes of social sciences, history, anthropology and urban sociology, cultural geography and urbanism. Its perspective is the long duration, in a macro-structural framework, and seeks to approximate academic production and urban public policies. The theme studied here is the Avenida Brasil, in Rio de Janeiro, the disputes involving its construction process in the first half of the twentieth century, the sense of expansion of the city to the suburb, the believes on the city flow through road transport, execution of public policies for the production of social housing for the popular strata in their surroundings, their territorial occupation and characterization as a symbol of an unjust city in which social inequality reigns. Analyzing the Avenida Brasil is also looking at the suburb, a peripheral object of cities studies. The occupation of this strip of the city by industries and popular housing soon resulted in the expansion of favelas in the city, as well as the need to fight and publicize the demand of its residents for better living conditions.