In this article, we address the persistence of urban critiques operated from the margins, that is, from what differs and struggles to find its place in the urban order. Those critiques, which historically emerged with urban struggles and artistic avant-gardes, aim at taking into account inhabiting and creative differences: multiple forms of life but also singularities of creation and expression. They have gradually stabilized, going so far as to feed a model of the ‘good city’: a ‘topic’ of the margins. In recent years, their institutionalisa- tion has led to the emergence of two new ‘topics’ – the well-being city and the attractive city - in which new compromises have been made with the demands of economic development and the need to guarantee urban qualities. By following the emergence, absorption and revival of this critique in Brussels, the aim is to contribute to a pragmatics of the urban order, attentive to both the forms of emancipation and oppres- sion contained in different models of the city.