We are glad to present the book “Reducing Boundaries” (E.B. Lessing, F. Vanin and D. Achutti – Mimesis International, 2017), that was recently launched during the final research seminars in Brussels and Venice. The book gives account of the results of the four year international homonym project funded by the European Research Agency and collects a series of written and visual essays produced by the multidisciplinary group of scholars form Latitude, IUAV (Venice) and Lasalle University (Brazil). Starting from the acknowledgement of ‘the rise of the security paradigm as a framework for organizing contemporary social life’ (Goldstein), the book offers insights on the role played by the upper-middle classes in recent urban transformations in Brazil, Belgium and Italy, focussing on the case of Porto Alegre. The ‘visual landscape of fear’, ‘social aesthetics’, security systems and building types, media and communication strategies, laws and prison system, are some of the issues discussed by different authors in oder to highlight emerging trends.