In the present work, we intend to analyze and understand the ways in which the bourgeois rationality is established and consolidated in the urban environment of the City of Rio de Janeiro in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. For this, in a first moment, the activity of visualizing the emergence of bourgeois rationality is mobilized in the context of nineteenth-century modernity, bringing together its characteristics present in the European environment, presented by a vast literature and works by authors such as Richard Sennett, of the city s reality. After that, the socio-political landscape of Rio de Janeiro is presented, linking the bourgeois ethos with the old cultural tradition in the city, indicative of the difficulty of creating a unison speech that would meet the needs of the state and the elites. In order to observe this dissonance, the analysis of journalistic production is carried out over the years 1903 and 1904, a period of major changes resulting from the urban reforms that took place in the city, and a showcase for conflicts of interest among the inhabitants of Rio de Janeiro. It is through the press speech that the elites seek to form a public opinion in the city. Through the perception of the lines of the newspapers, it is tried to demonstrate how the episodes of tension between the Rio elites, government and the population made possible the establishment of bourgeois reason as a unison speech in the city.