Social division into classes and the exploitation of the labor force of the lower income
class, in a relationship between dominant and dominated, are forms of social organization
in the capitalist economic system, whose ideology not only reflects on social inequality,
but naturalizes it. The perceptions of this naturalization occur in several aspects, among
them, by the socio-spatial organization of urban mobility. The preponderance of highway
projects implemented in cities in recent decades, combined with socio-spatial segregation
and the spread of cities, compromised the conditions of accessibility to urban services by
the poorest population, which in this process of expansion is taken to peripheral regions,
expanding social inequality. The objective of this dissertation is to promote reflections on
the naturalized perception of the conditions of social inequalities in urban mobility by
groups of different social classes, in view of the socio-environmental problem arising
from the current urban mobility model, which aggravates inequality and compromises the
quality of life of people and the urban environment. For this, interviews were conducted
with people from different social classes who use different modes of daily locomotion:
walking, cycling, car and bus, as well as observations of road infrastructure in the built
space and the behavior of people in the observed places. The combined analysis of the
results allowed us to conclude that the naturalization of inequality is perceived and
practiced by the different social classes, which points to an obstacle to overcoming the
highway model in urban mobility and socio-spatial inequalities.
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