This article reviews, in Tristes Tropiques, Lévi-Strauss' observations about the theme of the city: his first impressions when he arrived in Brazil, his "Sundays ethnography" in São Paulo city, the birth of news cities in Paraná and the crowds in urban India; this last that conduced him to comparisons with the characteristics of the urban processes in the New World. Taking his reflections as an analysis exercise in an anthropological way, this article concludes suggesting some categories to think about the dynamic reality of the contemporaneous urban city.
city; urban anthropology; analytic categories; metropolis