In a world that is, little by little, dominated by urbanization, to observe the city s reality is to closely observe the life of the majority of the planet’s inhabitants. In International Relations, this movement is something that Matt Davies calls finding the international in the everyday (2016, p.2). This dissertation observes the city of Rio de Janeiro as a laboratory for analyzing inequality, exclusions and marginalization commonly manifested in the urban space. Taking into account the specificities of Rio de Janeiro as a postcolonial city, and the role formerly conferred to urban planning as an instrument for the improvement of social order, this work investigates the continuous negotiations, soft or hard, between conformation and rupture, of individuals with the city’s forms and norms. From the point of view of some of the marginalized groups in Rio de Janeiro, through a standpoint methodology and narrative, the aim is to highlight the inadequacies of urban planning in face of the complexity of the Carioca everyday and to discuss the tendency to create borders that condition the access to the city based on factors such as race, gender and socioeconomic class.