Through our contribution, we would like to question the transformations, symbolical and morphological, of the Moscow city in the 20th and early 21st centuries, focusing on three key moments in its political and economic transitions and particularly on its emergence as a capital city. We will first focus on the regained status as a capital city in 1918, after more than two hundred years of destitution in benefit of Saint Petersburg, on the mission to make it the socialist capital city of young USSR and the capital city of the whole world revolution. How have these aspirations been reflected in urban plans, particularly in plan of 1935, and in their application on the real physical space? We will outline the legal framework that has facilitated and supported these transformations: nationalization of land and real estate properties and the centralized structure of territorial and architectural planning. The second period under consideration is the end of the Soviet regime, marked by the return of private property and the accession of Yuri Luzhkov to the first position as mayor of post-Soviet Moscow. How did the new values displayed, particularly commercial and religious values, become part of the urban space? Beyond the symbolic markers, how did the introduction of the cadastre revive the parcel after seventy years of erasing this primary urban division unit in favour of large built units, such as kvartal and mikroraïon? How could the legacy of a centralized structure of urban planning been combined with the emergence of a private project based structure. The third moment we have chosen to explore concerns the Greater Moscow. Sergey Sobyanin, newly nominated mayor, is engaged in 2012 in organizing an international contest for the development of the Moscow metropolitan area. The keystone of the whole process is a portion of regional territory (in the southwest), which will be officially integrated into the administrative territory of Moscow municipality and will be developed to become the ""New Moscow"". How to integrate this part of the territory? What role do real estate developers play? What remains of the contest's teaching in the contemporary metropolitan area?