This article analyses the projects and tensions that marked the life of the inhabitants of Campina Grande, Paraíba, Brazil, between 1930 and 1945, when the city was the center of a very confusing urban reform. It explains how the elites lived the changes that moved away from the downtown - the stage for the performance of power - a great number of liberal professionals, landowners, real estate owners, and merchants. Besides analyzing the singular characteristics of the urban reform in Campina Grande, the author questions the Brazilian historiography that overestimates the disciplinary dimension that would have marked the birth of the modern cities in Brazil. He finds out that more than the universalization of the so-called modern values, what predominate are the multiple readings and reactions to the institutionalization of the cities.
City; Urban reform; Historiography