In Brazil, the politicisation of interventions in urban centres seems urgent, for many are the difficulties in developing an urban policy with a socially fair use of land as its main objective. Based on a reflection and revision of the literature on the production of urban space in Curitiba, this paper studies the historic process of socio-spatial exclusion in the ‘model city’, reinvigorated by public investment and land-use legislation disregarding the administrative and fiscal instruments of the Estatuto da Cidade (City Statute) (Ley Federal 10.257 of 2001). The problem of housing is not mentioned in the discourse legitimising the idea of Curitiba as a ‘model’. As a result, this might lead to suppose that the creation of housing in areas distant from the centre and the conservation of underutilised property are strategic for the preservation of the ‘postcard’ image of Curitiba.