O processo de urbanização de Mossorò: dos processos históricos à estrutura urbana atual

The general objective of this academic work is to analyze the relationship between the territorial division and the urban expansion process of Mossoró city, understood here as the production and occupation of space. The urban expansion in Mossoró, since its formation as settlement in 1772 until current days, identifies with the Brazilian urbanization process whose growth is determined by the capitalist development. Thus, the expansion was determined by several economical specializations imposed by the territorial division of work which occurs at an interregional level, and, sometimes at an international level. Then, each specialization determined a moment of the urban expansion of the city, as follows: a) The cattle farmer specialization, between 1772 and 1857, when the urban expansion was shy, is summarized to a commercial square that received goods from Aracati aiming to cover a wide rural area; b) The commercial emporium specialization, between 1857 and 1930, when the urban expansion took an important impulse with the concentration of public and private capitals; c) The salt industry and the agricultural-industrial exporter specialization inside a state of development policy, between 1930 and 1970, when the urban expansion, joined to the settlement of the working class in the urban soil, developed along an important axis -the railway; d) The render of services specialization inside a state of intervention policy, between 1970 and 1990, when the urban expansion was characterized by the accelerated growth rhythm, by the reuse of some spaces, and by space segregation of demanding people; e) The render of services policy inside a neoliberal state policy, since 1990 until current days, when the urban expansion reduced its rhythm abruptly, when only small alterations occurred in the existing spaces. It focused on social policies and on several slums eradication programs. Finally, the territorial structure is deeply articulated with others, no territorial, but economical, social and political, which happens at a national, regional and local rate. Only within a historical and conceptual panorama, it was possible to explain the urban expansion in Mossoró from its formation in 1772 until current days. Therefore, this work is a several discipline analysis of the urbanization process existing in Mossoró

O ouro branco abre caminho: o algodão e a modernização do espaço urbano da Cidade da Parahyba (1850-1924)

The present research deals with the modernization process of the Cidade da Parahyba2, between 1850 and 1924, and its relation with the cotton economy, which represented the main source of wealth accumulation for both the private and the public sectors throughout the First Republic. This study on urban history was developed by focusing on the understanding of the city s spatial formation, and despite its emphasis on the economic aspects involved, other factors that also contribute to the development of the social life were not put aside. The modernization process of the Cidade da Parahyba was also analyzed during the period established for the study according to a chronological and thematic approach that established comparisons with the financial situation of the State, whenever this was necessary, with special attention to the contribution of the cotton economy to the State´s revenues. It was possible to detect a lack of financial help and loans from the federal and municipal administrations for finishing several public works already underway in the capital, since the federal funds allocated to the State of Parahyba do Norte were rather employed in emergency works against droughts and in agricultural development. One can then conclude that the financial resources required for the urban interventions were withdrawn from the State s treasury itself, resources that were collected mainly from activities such as cotton exportation and cotton trading. Another factor shows the interdependence between the urban remodeling and the cotton economy: during the years marked by great droughts or by hard plagues on the cotton plantations, cotton production decreased, as well as the State s finances. The first measures taken by the State s administrators were to halt all projects of urban remodeling in progress in the Cidade da Parahyba, which was, clearly, the most privileged city by the State s presidents during the period analyzed. 2 The city of João Pessoa was named Cidade da Parahyba, a designation that remained until September 1930, when it received its present-day name in order to pay homage to the president of the State, João Pessoa Cavalcanti de Albuquerque, murdered in the city of Recife in August of that same year. At that time, the State of Paraíba was known as Parahyba do Norte. Since this work is limited to a period of time comprised within the First Republic, the names employed respect the terms used in those days

José Lins do Rego e a modernização da economia açucareira

Analysis of the northeastern sugar economy insertion on the modernization process of these economy based on the José Lins do Rego literary Discourse. In order to do so, there were used the literary works Fogo Morto, Menino de Engenho, Bangüê and Usina as study objects. Throughout the prosecution of a exploratory and documental bibliographic research it was identified that, in the cited literary works, there are three specialties corresponding to the main scenarios of the plots, the Santa Fé and Santa Rosa mills and the Bom Jesus mill factory. We have conceived the mills as main charachters, since all stories deployment corresponds to the other charachters reactions to the many forms that the specialties are, or not, affected by the modernization. Therefore, the narratives in Fogo Morto, Menino de Engenho, Bangüê and Usina reaffirm the viability of the literary discourse application as a source for the construction of the sociological interpretation of the northeastern sugar economy process of modernization in the end of 19th century and beginning of the 20th century

O programa de aquisição de alimentos (PAA) e as transformações socioterritoriais no Rio Grande do Norte

The Acquisition Food Program (Programa de Aquisição de Alimentos – PAA) is one of the governmental public politics proposed, in the year of 2003, that has the focus in the family-run farm in Brazil. This Program has as objectives: commercialize the familyrun farm products, bought by the government agencies; to encourage production, and promoting actions that improve quality food of people facing starving risk. This Program has been working, to some extent, as complement to the Program of family-run farm Enhancement (PRONAF). The present study has as its focus to analyse the social territorials changes observed in the state of Rio Grande do Norte, as a result of the PAA implementation. In this sense, it was promoted a discussion between territory and rules. I this work, public politics are understood as rules. This procedure was important in order to understand how the rules have influenced territorial changes, creating new social and territorial relations. In the research process was used scientific and institutional texts on the subject. It was applied a quiz with 97 PAA’s supplying farmers, and interviews were done with the Program managers in Federal (MDA), State (CONAB and EMATER) and municipal (local office of EMATER and Departments of Agriculture) levels. Social public politics were also analyzed with the aim of understand the context where PAA is situated in relation with the public politics directed to familyrun farm as a whole since 1980, within new Brazilian democratization process. With the information collected in the field, plus the secondary data, maps, charts, tables and cartograms were made. With all of this, a socio-economical profile of the family-run farm in the Rio Grande do Norte was traced, as well as the included in this research. Before this picture, we concluded that PAA indeed represents a forward in public politics directed to family-run farm. However, in spite of the importance of the Program for the family-run farmers to come of age, but in order to the rural and family-run farm reality in the Rio Grande do Norte come to present meaningful changes much still remain to be done.

O processo de urbanização de Mossorò: dos processos históricos à estrutura urbana atual

The general objective of this academic work is to analyze the relationship between the territorial division and the urban expansion process of Mossoró city, understood here as the production and occupation of space. The urban expansion in Mossoró, since its formation as settlement in 1772 until current days, identifies with the Brazilian urbanization process whose growth is determined by the capitalist development. Thus, the expansion was determined by several economical specializations imposed by the territorial division of work which occurs at an interregional level, and, sometimes at an international level. Then, each specialization determined a moment of the urban expansion of the city, as follows: a) The cattle farmer specialization, between 1772 and 1857, when the urban expansion was shy, is summarized to a commercial square that received goods from Aracati aiming to cover a wide rural area; b) The commercial emporium specialization, between 1857 and 1930, when the urban expansion took an important impulse with the concentration of public and private capitals; c) The salt industry and the agricultural-industrial exporter specialization inside a state of development policy, between 1930 and 1970, when the urban expansion, joined to the settlement of the working class in the urban soil, developed along an important axis -the railway; d) The render of services specialization inside a state of intervention policy, between 1970 and 1990, when the urban expansion was characterized by the accelerated growth rhythm, by the reuse of some spaces, and by space segregation of demanding people; e) The render of services policy inside a neoliberal state policy, since 1990 until current days, when the urban expansion reduced its rhythm abruptly, when only small alterations occurred in the existing spaces. It focused on social policies and on several slums eradication programs. Finally, the territorial structure is deeply articulated with others, no territorial, but economical, social and political, which happens at a national, regional and local rate. Only within a historical and conceptual panorama, it was possible to explain the urban expansion in Mossoró from its formation in 1772 until current days. Therefore, this work is a several discipline analysis of the urbanization process existing in Mossoró

O ouro branco abre caminho: o algodão e a modernização do espaço urbano da Cidade da Parahyba (1850-1924)

The present research deals with the modernization process of the Cidade da Parahyba2, between 1850 and 1924, and its relation with the cotton economy, which represented the main source of wealth accumulation for both the private and the public sectors throughout the First Republic. This study on urban history was developed by focusing on the understanding of the city s spatial formation, and despite its emphasis on the economic aspects involved, other factors that also contribute to the development of the social life were not put aside. The modernization process of the Cidade da Parahyba was also analyzed during the period established for the study according to a chronological and thematic approach that established comparisons with the financial situation of the State, whenever this was necessary, with special attention to the contribution of the cotton economy to the State´s revenues. It was possible to detect a lack of financial help and loans from the federal and municipal administrations for finishing several public works already underway in the capital, since the federal funds allocated to the State of Parahyba do Norte were rather employed in emergency works against droughts and in agricultural development. One can then conclude that the financial resources required for the urban interventions were withdrawn from the State s treasury itself, resources that were collected mainly from activities such as cotton exportation and cotton trading. Another factor shows the interdependence between the urban remodeling and the cotton economy: during the years marked by great droughts or by hard plagues on the cotton plantations, cotton production decreased, as well as the State s finances. The first measures taken by the State s administrators were to halt all projects of urban remodeling in progress in the Cidade da Parahyba, which was, clearly, the most privileged city by the State s presidents during the period analyzed. 2 The city of João Pessoa was named Cidade da Parahyba, a designation that remained until September 1930, when it received its present-day name in order to pay homage to the president of the State, João Pessoa Cavalcanti de Albuquerque, murdered in the city of Recife in August of that same year. At that time, the State of Paraíba was known as Parahyba do Norte. Since this work is limited to a period of time comprised within the First Republic, the names employed respect the terms used in those days

Ribeira, técnica versus natureza: transformações em prol de um projeto de modernização (1860-1932)

The necessity of the insertion of the capital of Rio Grande do Norte in the world-wide commercial scene and its claim as the seat of political power, in ends of nineteenth and beginning of twentieth century, determined the direction of urban interventions undertaken by government to restructure the city. In that matter, there were several actions of improvements and embellishment in Natal, which had, as a starting point, the adequacy works of the port, located in the Ribeira quarter, with the aim of ending the physical isolation that reinforced its economic stagnation. Besides the problems faced in the opening bar of the Potengi River, and would complement the required improvements, other barriers demonstrate the tension established between the physic-geographic field and the man: the flooded and slope which connected Cidade Alta and Ribeira the first two quarters of the city.The execution of these works demanded knowledge whose domain and application it was for engineering. But, how the actions done for the engineers, in sense to transform natural areas into constructed spaces made possible the intentional conformation of the quarter of the Ribeira in a commercial and politician-administrative center, in the middle of the XIX century and beginning of the XX? Understand, therefore, the employment effects of technology on the physical-geographical Ribeira, is the objective of this work that uses theoretical and methodological procedures of Urban Environmental History, by analyzing the relationship between the environment and the man, mediated by knowledge and use of technologies. The documental research was used, as primary sources, the Messages of the Provincial Assembly Government that later became the Legislative Assembly of Rio Grande do Norte reports and articles on specialized publications, in addition to local newspapers. The work is structured in five chapters. First, some comments about Urban Environmental History (Chapter 1) supplemented with analysis of the conceptual construction of nature in the Contemporary Era and its application in the city (chapter 02), the following chapters (03 and 04) deal with the rise of engineers as a active group in the Brazilian government frameworks and their vision about the nature inside the urban environment and it is studied how the professional technicians dealt with the improvement work of the harbor and in the shock with the natural forces. Other works that would complement this "project" of modernization and had had natural obstacles to be removed the Ribeira flood and slope constitute the subject of the fifth chapter. Finally, some final considerations retake the initial discussions aiming an association between the technique and the nature as junction elements inside the process of constitution of a Modern Natal

Henrique Novaes: técnica, território e cidade em uma trajetória profissional: Brasil, primeira metade do século XX

The career of civil engineer Henrique de Novaes, a remarkable figure in the academic, technical and political fields, demonstrates its extensive and relevant work across Brazil in the first half of the twentieth century. It covered from the design of water supply and sewage works, road and rail transport networks, works against drought in the Northeast, hydroelectric and harbor facilities to the urbanization planning and architectural projects, which displays a systematic and multiple production. City and territory conformed to his fields of verification, practical and above all, transformation. The search for understanding of the inclusion of a social actor in this process thus contributes to the specific analysis of the doings of Henrique de Novaes, who graduated at Polytechnic School of Rio de Janeiro in 1906. From a polymorphic activity in different scales, one tries to figure how, through academic education or professional practice, urban history in Brazil can be told or built. The introduction of technological innovations matched the purposes of planning and urban sprawl, as well as met the specifications of regulation and institutionalization of public infrastructure services at the time. The overall plans proposed by the engineer thought of the city as a whole, interconnected to the structural networks. At the same time, the knowledge of a larger physical scale the territory bounces back in the urban in a relationship of reciprocity and completeness. The objective research, therefore, tries to understand the roles played by Henrique de Novaes s works and academic education in the accomplishment of systematic modernization of Brazilian urban space and territory, recovering a little known historical figure by current historiography. It is proposed, as methodological axis, that the study of this professional career configures itself as an essential element for understanding the idea of progress embodied in the technical studies and proposals for improvements and sanitation nationwide in the first half of the twentieth century . The primary sources for the construction of this analysis were technical articles in journals of the period ( Clube de Engenharia , Viação e Revista Brasileira de Engenharia ), and technical reports, government messages, newspaper articles published at the time, autobiographical reports and the engineer s verbal communications with relatives. The work is structured in three chapters: "Biographical traces, academic education and 'technical and political' activities" illustrates the initiation into the technical, public and political environment; Chapter 2, "Technique and territory" outlines his network understanding through sanitation and transport services; Chapter 3 "Technique and City" describes the influence of polytechnics knowledge on the propositions of modernization of cities; Finally, "Final Thoughts: An Evaluation," presents an overview of the affiliations and practice of an engineer in the different scales, and its contribution to the modernization of Brazilian urban and territorial space

ELOY DE SOUZA: UMA INTERPRETAÇÃO SOBRE O NORDESTE E OS DILEMAS DAS SECAS

The thought of Eloy de Souza is studied (1873-1959), that left a significant intellectual production in the journalistic, cultural and politicial scope on the Northeast and the dilemmas of the droughts. Through the method of content analysis, his journalistic and literary speech is investigated, looking at to understand the elaboration and/ or reiteration of categories, of representations and of values; it is verified how was conceived the constitution of the political thought and which is it´s principal slopes; the parliamentary speech, present in his interventions is analyzed in plenary session, participation in commissions and in his projects, particularly in the thematic area of the droughts. It is verified that his work is built in a political and ideological perspective inserting the bourgeoisie landowner's interests and Northeastern commercial and of it´s political strata, inside the historical block of agro-industry power that has as irradiation focus the area of the coffee represented politically by the oligarchies person from São Paulo and Minas Gerais. In that sense, two crucial categories emerge: the droughts and the country, as the Northeastern and Brazilian man's synthesis, with their resistance capacity and adaptation, and their creative effort in an adverse enviroment, that Eloy de Souza started to insert in his political speech. However, the vision that he passes of the "country suffer", expresses a certain idealization of a lifestyle that corresponds to a traditional dominance, that he want´s to be reproduced. Although it looked for the solution for the drought through the modernization of the economy by the adoption of advanced methods as the irrigation, his concern went back to the conservation of the economical and cultural political hegemony of that elite. Thus, his inquietude with the process of integration of the subordinate sections, justifies his consensual speech, harmonic as organic intellectual of the agrarian-commercial bourgeoisie of the Brazilian Northeast

Bioenergia e exclusão regional: a não política nacional agroenergética e os girassóis do RN

This doctoral thesis presents an analysis of the production of bicarbonates and related regional development in Brazil. It is widely believed that one of Brazil s vocations lies in the agro-energy sector. However, current national agro-energy policies, together with the experience of Petrobras (the national oil company) in rural settlements in the state of Rio Grande do Norte, show that Brazil has fallen short of effectively including the North and Northeast regions of the country, let alone small-scale rural producers (residing in rural settlements or not), in the development process and related benefits from the country s participation in the current world energy grid. The methodology entails secondary research related to the theme, such as books, official documents, websites and statistical databases from diverse sources, in addition to an analysis of statements from interviews of Petrobras representatives and other important scientific, institutional and labor union authorities, in relation to agro-energy issues and the socio-economic participation of family-based agriculture in this process. Principal findings show a correlation between agro-energy and regional development, creating the potential for numerous opportunities and challenges. Findings demonstrate the possibility of reversing/reducing historically rooted indices of hunger and poverty that continue to devastate the North and Northeast regions. At the same time, the thesis points to a potentially catastrophic increase in regional disparities, should the present historic moment not be seized upon so as to include these regions. Classic examples of non-policy at the federal level are presented as evidence of the absence of a regionally focused agroenergy policy in the current government, reinforced by the experiences of Petrobras in the Rio Grande do Norte rural settlements. Finally, the thesis concludes that there is an urgent need to create a government-sponsored enterprise (with a structure similar to Petrobras) with the purpose of implementing a truly broad and inclusive development process for the bicarbonates production sector, while remaining attentive to Brazil s opportune and critical role in the world s current agro-energy scenario.

A implementação do programa Gestão nota 10 no sistema municipal de educação em Mossoró/RN (2005 a 2009)

This research work is focused to show the changes in educational administration from the agreements between the Mossoró / RN and the Ayrton Senna Institute IAS, for education provision. Nowadays, the partnership policy is a constitutive element of the reform of the Brazilian State, which dropped its action on social policies and to strengthen its regulatory role, encouraging private participation in planning, preparation and implementation of public policies, new printing setting the political-social. In this context, the 10 Note Management Programme, developed by the IAS, is part of the neoliberal logic of modernization of public school systems, focusing on results and developing strategies for control and regulation of schools work and its efficiency, effectiveness and greater productivity. The 10 Note focuses on two dimensions: the management of learning and teaching in networking, in a managerial perspective to overcome the culture of failure (expressed as age-grade, dropout and repetition rates in) and implantation of culture of success (as measured in the improvement of the indices). To understanding the process, we have delimited as the object of study, the process of implementing them mentioned program in the city, which its objective is to analyze implications for the school community from the perspective of democratic management, adopting the dimensions of autonomy and participation in institutional processes as a criterion of analysis. From a methodological point of view, the survey was conducted from a literature review and documentary about educational policy developed in the country since the 1990´s, seeking to understand, in a dialectical perspective, the political dimensions of teaching, training and performance of the subjects involved in the school work. Besides the empirical observation, it was also used semi-structured interviews with a methodological tool for gathering information and opinions about the partnership and the implementation of the 10 Note Management Program in the county. The interviewee participants were ex-former education managers, coordinators, school managers, secretaries and teachers. Regarding the dimensions inside the analysis (autonomy and participation), the research led to the conclusion: that GEED, under the guidance of IAS promoted regulation of school autonomy, set up the selection process for exercising the office of school administration and system awards to schools, pupils and teachers, subject to results, there is mismatch between the managerial logic and the democratic management principles, that the ideological discourse of modernization of municipal management coexists with traditional practices, centralizing patronage, which ignores the democratic participation in the school decisions processes, the goals of the partnership were partially achieved, since that the city has improved over the approval and dropouts, although the approval of the Education Municipal Plan of the rules institutional (administrative, financial and educational) and the creation of the Councils observed that the school community participation is still limited, not being characterized as a coordinated intervention, capable of promoting the transformation and improvement its quality in the county. In the same way, the orientation of networking is a limit to the autonomy of schools, given the external definition of goals and strategies to be adopted, along with pressure exerted through the accountability of each school community for their achievements

Engenharia nos sertões nordestinos: o Gargalheiras, a Barragem Marechal Dutra e a comunidade de Acari, 1909-1958

In Brazil, between the late nineteenth and early decades of the twentieth, polytechnic engineers assumed an important role in discussing the establishment of a modern country. The problem of drought in northeastern Brazil gave the professionals performance, within an interventional process more mounts, the conception plans and measures for the purposeful integration of the territory afflicted. With the foundation of Inspetoria de Obras Contra as Secas (IOCS), in 1909, the actions to combat drought and would be institutionalized, them, studies performed out by technical and scientific committees would be systematically applied in the Brazilian Northeast. So, This work was central objective understand the historical process inplantation of a whole infrastructure of modern character by professional technical and their consequences within the Northeast Geographic space, in specific, in the municipality of Acari in the State of Rio Grande do Norte, in the first half of the twentieth century. The politics of the government, through technical education and scientific engineers polytechnics, would emphasize, during the twentieth century, the building of dams, and irrigation canals, wells, railways, highways, between other elements, that would soon transform the physical space-northeast, specifically, the territory acariense. These works began to contribute to the setting of man backcountry their land, promote the regular practice of agriculture even in periods of drought and, the integration, especially, economic of territory acariense the other producing regions of Rio Grande do Norte and the Northeast as well as promoting the modification of the landscape of the world backcountry. These actions functioned as elements of modernity and progress that transformed the space by favoring by favoring the formation of urban networks (urban) in this space

Reformas administrativas no Brasil: o caso do governo do estado do Piauí

From the 1980s, with technological development, globalization, and in a context of increasingly urgent demands, there is an international movement to modernize the state structures. Being driven by the victory of conservative governments in Britain and the U.S., this speech reform comes only to Brazil in the 1990s, the government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso. Thus, in view of the recent movement of states to implement this reform agenda in their structures this research was to identify the elements that made it possible to attempt to modernize the administrative structure of the state of Piauí in 2003, in view of the political and administrative career in which the state was entered. Seeking to clarify the problem studied here, through a case study carried out a descriptive and exploratory, using a technique of gathering data to document research and interviews semi-structured. As the lens of analysis for this study used the neo-historical and sociological institutionalism, through which it sought to identify the critical moment in which they gave the Administrative Reform of Piaui, the process of breaking with the political and administrative career that previously had being followed, and the isomorphic mechanisms that enabled this speech reform comes up to this state, mechanisms that allow the homogenization of the organizational field. In general it appears that the search for new patterns and new technologies for management by the states in Brazil is due to the context of fiscal crisis in which the states were entered, forcing them to seek alternative models of management . The process of diffusion of New Public Management agenda for the states became possible, among other factors, due to the new scenario in which was inserted into the Brazilian federal system in the second half of the 1990s, characterized by a greater articulation between the horizontalstates, where through the mechanisms of isomorphic institutional change was made possible by the absorption of the speech states reformer of the 1990s. However, due to the specificities of each region is given the experiences state unevenly. In the case of Piauí Administrative Reform only became possible due to the rearrangement of political forces in the state and the mechanisms of isomorphic institutional change, which allowed, in 2003, the state government to absorb the speech reformer

Ribeira, técnica versus natureza: transformações em prol de um projeto de modernização (1860-1932)

The necessity of the insertion of the capital of Rio Grande do Norte in the world-wide commercial scene and its claim as the seat of political power, in ends of nineteenth and beginning of twentieth century, determined the direction of urban interventions undertaken by government to restructure the city. In that matter, there were several actions of improvements and embellishment in Natal, which had, as a starting point, the adequacy works of the port, located in the Ribeira quarter, with the aim of ending the physical isolation that reinforced its economic stagnation. Besides the problems faced in the opening bar of the Potengi River, and would complement the required improvements, other barriers demonstrate the tension established between the physic-geographic field and the man: the flooded and slope which connected Cidade Alta and Ribeira the first two quarters of the city.The execution of these works demanded knowledge whose domain and application it was for engineering. But, how the actions done for the engineers, in sense to transform natural areas into constructed spaces made possible the intentional conformation of the quarter of the Ribeira in a commercial and politician-administrative center, in the middle of the XIX century and beginning of the XX? Understand, therefore, the employment effects of technology on the physical-geographical Ribeira, is the objective of this work that uses theoretical and methodological procedures of Urban Environmental History, by analyzing the relationship between the environment and the man, mediated by knowledge and use of technologies. The documental research was used, as primary sources, the Messages of the Provincial Assembly Government that later became the Legislative Assembly of Rio Grande do Norte reports and articles on specialized publications, in addition to local newspapers. The work is structured in five chapters. First, some comments about Urban Environmental History (Chapter 1) supplemented with analysis of the conceptual construction of nature in the Contemporary Era and its application in the city (chapter 02), the following chapters (03 and 04) deal with the rise of engineers as a active group in the Brazilian government frameworks and their vision about the nature inside the urban environment and it is studied how the professional technicians dealt with the improvement work of the harbor and in the shock with the natural forces. Other works that would complement this "project" of modernization and had had natural obstacles to be removed the Ribeira flood and slope constitute the subject of the fifth chapter. Finally, some final considerations retake the initial discussions aiming an association between the technique and the nature as junction elements inside the process of constitution of a Modern Natal

Henrique Novaes: técnica, território e cidade em uma trajetória profissional: Brasil, primeira metade do século XX

The career of civil engineer Henrique de Novaes, a remarkable figure in the academic, technical and political fields, demonstrates its extensive and relevant work across Brazil in the first half of the twentieth century. It covered from the design of water supply and sewage works, road and rail transport networks, works against drought in the Northeast, hydroelectric and harbor facilities to the urbanization planning and architectural projects, which displays a systematic and multiple production. City and territory conformed to his fields of verification, practical and above all, transformation. The search for understanding of the inclusion of a social actor in this process thus contributes to the specific analysis of the doings of Henrique de Novaes, who graduated at Polytechnic School of Rio de Janeiro in 1906. From a polymorphic activity in different scales, one tries to figure how, through academic education or professional practice, urban history in Brazil can be told or built. The introduction of technological innovations matched the purposes of planning and urban sprawl, as well as met the specifications of regulation and institutionalization of public infrastructure services at the time. The overall plans proposed by the engineer thought of the city as a whole, interconnected to the structural networks. At the same time, the knowledge of a larger physical scale the territory bounces back in the urban in a relationship of reciprocity and completeness. The objective research, therefore, tries to understand the roles played by Henrique de Novaes s works and academic education in the accomplishment of systematic modernization of Brazilian urban space and territory, recovering a little known historical figure by current historiography. It is proposed, as methodological axis, that the study of this professional career configures itself as an essential element for understanding the idea of progress embodied in the technical studies and proposals for improvements and sanitation nationwide in the first half of the twentieth century . The primary sources for the construction of this analysis were technical articles in journals of the period ( Clube de Engenharia , Viação e Revista Brasileira de Engenharia ), and technical reports, government messages, newspaper articles published at the time, autobiographical reports and the engineer s verbal communications with relatives. The work is structured in three chapters: "Biographical traces, academic education and 'technical and political' activities" illustrates the initiation into the technical, public and political environment; Chapter 2, "Technique and territory" outlines his network understanding through sanitation and transport services; Chapter 3 "Technique and City" describes the influence of polytechnics knowledge on the propositions of modernization of cities; Finally, "Final Thoughts: An Evaluation," presents an overview of the affiliations and practice of an engineer in the different scales, and its contribution to the modernization of Brazilian urban and territorial space