How the politics of pacification developed by the Brazilian government – wich transform the spaces of the mobility and the urban ambiences – put the pedestrian sensibilities and the manners by which city-dwellers share the spaces of movement to the test ? In other words, how does ‘being together’ occur and reveal itself in complex, urban environments subject to considerable movement but also to rationales driven by standardization, security and aseptisation ? Finally, can a work on ambiences and ‘bodily states’ allow to improve a critical analysis on contemporary urbanity ? For four years, during a work programme funded by France’s National Research Agency (ANR) on ‘the sensory enigmas of contemporary urban mobilities’ (Thomas et alii, 2014). these questions were examined by French and Brazilian researchers from three fields : urban sociology, architecture and dance.