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In anticipation of the CIHA 2020 conference in São Paulo, this session explores architecture, urban development, and the challenges associated with the twentieth-century transformation of Brazil’s traditional capital, Rio de Janeiro, as well as its so-called industry city, São Paulo, into modern metropolises. Until the 1930s Rio retained the basic structure of a colonial capital and São Paulo was a modern, yet mainly horizontally oriented city. The 1940s and 50s witnessed dramatic changes to both. São Paulo developed along the lines of a concept of “verticalization.” Its 34-story Martinelli Building remained the highest structure there for many years, but when it was eclipsed, São Paulo rapidly took on the image of a skyscraper city. In the case of Rio, plans for creating a new federal capital in Brazil’s central plains that had been discussed for decades became a reality in 1957 when Lúcio Costa won a national competition for Brasília. Meanwhile, Rio’s coastline and inner city were vastly transformed. A prominent hill, Morro Santo Antônio, was flattened displacing thousands from across the city’s social strata. Also, the coastline of Guanabara Bay stretching from the modernist Santos Dumont airport through Copacabana was expanded with landfill giving rise to a large-scale park that became of an iconic symbol of the city’s urban renewal. With these changes to the urban fabric of Rio and São Paulo, local histories as well as identities were inevitably altered. This panel assesses both the architectural and human contingencies associated with “progress” in Brazil’s two largest municipalities.