Supported by the governmentality studies perspective initiated by Michel Foucault, this dissertation analyses national and international urban policies. The favelas Pacification Program of Rio de Janeiro s government and UN-HABITAT urban policies are the main objects of study. The objective is to identify how the urban space and political subjects are constituted as targets of intervention in contemporaneity. Liberal rationalities of government are discussed with the intent of identifying rearticulations in the way through which the urban space is organized. The argument is that the problem of government in classical liberalism was shaped by a moral or normative perspective. This perspective isrearticulated into a more normalized rational/economic rationality. In other words, the way through which political subjects are thought and acted upon is becoming less centered in moral subjects and more centered in a discussion about rational/economic individuals.