This work aims to understand the factors that enabled the survival of a traditional community within the processes of metropolisation an urban area. We tried to understand the processes that create obstacles to the survival, as well as the multiple intentions involved in this kind of social reproduction, whose outcomes are often contradictory. Our propose, therefore, is to contribute to the understanding of current processes seemingly conflicting, but that, if investigated in depth, come to be seen as parts of one dominant game whose main purpose is to reproduce itself. For such understanding, we work with a theoretical basis and an empirical research intertwined: a case study. The findings were organized in three chapters. The first one presents the idea of community and tradition, focusing on the social role that these categories may represent. We start with the idea of Manuel Castells who claims to be the formation of communities through the construction of identities of resistance the starting point for structural changes. The second chapter deals with the issue of development taken as a synonym of modernization and westernization and that guides a homogenizing logic of the cities, ignoring the real possibilities of social transformation from endogenous and autonomous development. We base our thinking the authors João Rua and Marcelo Lopes de Souza. Finally, chapter three incorporates the social potential of the experience of multiterritoriality based in multiple identities. In this sense, we work with Rogério Haesbaert, Marcos Saquet and Denise Fonseca. Empirical research takes as a case study the fishing community of Copacabana, located in Rio de Janeiro, and the methodology of the research comprised interviews and field observations, as well as research on personal files and settings on the community and urban expansion of the neighborhood of Copacabana.