Urban parks are not random spatial constructions. Neither is their relationship to cities. Through socio-semiotic research, this paper analyzes how parks in São Paulo configure ways of being characteristic of the city and emphasizes the role of these spaces as laboratories, identifying grants for management and a possible response to the crisis of public space in the city.It is in public and open areas are the possibilities of creating a more inclusive city, where horizontality, collective interaction and respect for diversity can (perhaps) overcome the rigid structures of a vertical and exclusionary development.