This study investigates the links between transport and violence, circulation and control in Brazilian metropolises based on Virilio’s thought. A systematic reading of his first books investigates the emergence of logistics from the transformations of war and technique in modernity. From there, the military origins of the urban space lead to a reflection on the “critical space” of cities in the present, taken to the limit, according to Virilio, in the structures of large airports. The route approaches, then, the Brazilian metropolises: through the window of the bus, the “logic of acceleration” insistently denounced by Paul Virilio throughout his work shows itself in a very concrete way. It will be possible, therefore, to raise some hypotheses for a political economy of urban transportation in Brazil, pointing to possible mechanisms of dispossession at play. Finally, we seek to probe the counterintuitive proximity between imprisonment and circulation – or between the bus and the paddy wagon –, as it is indicated by Virilio, in the daily life of the contemporary city.
Key words: Paul Virilio, speed, transportation, logistics, city, urban space.