Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’s second biggest city is both seen as a leisurely paradise and a dangerous drug-warzone at the same time, two contra-dictory spatial images. In Rio de Janeiro, the urban conflict between the rich, formal city and the favela and the police and the favela has produced an abstract spatial image of the favela and its residents as being violent. In the same way in which the formal city and police have produced their abstract spatial image and social space of the fa-vela, those in the favela has produced their own abstract spatial imag-es of the police, the formal city and of themselves. This development in Rio de Janeiro is juxtaposed with the similar development in Los Angeles during their drug war in the 1980’s.This study analyzes, through narratives, how the spatial images in both Rio de Janeiro and Los Angeles have been constructed and shaped their urban landscapes into a fortified and exclusionary one.