Thais Sant´Ana is a PhD candidate at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Built on extensive archival research and supported by the Lemann Center for Brazilian Studies, her current research focuses on the urban and social history of the Amazon and contributes to the debate about the making of modern Brazil. Histories of cities are in some sense singular and unique. At the same time, I understand that what takes place in each city can enlighten the ways in which a variety of wider and broader urban dynamics operate. Literature in Brazilian urban history has significantly spoken to problems contextualized within turn-of-the-century São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, and engages with the idea of modernization without change. This talk provides a discussion that expands on the contributions from these studies. It invites us to reflect further on processes and agents that helped build, unbuild, and rebuild Manaus – one the country´s most important urban centers – while inquiring the features of an ecology of urban development that operated in Northern Brazil prior to the peak of the rubber-boom.