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Urban rivers have been considered, for different cities, as sources of problems and solutions. The objective of this article is to evaluate local communities’ perception of sociopolitical actions and the natural attributes of the Belém River, located in the city of Curitiba. This study is justified by the theoretical contributions of evaluating urban rivers based on perceptions of the community. The results indicate that the river has been progressively deteriorating to the point where, paradoxically in relation to the constructed view of the sustainable and ecological city, the community considers it useless for domestic purposes, representing a source of discomfort and health hazards. However, the same community still values the river as a public good and demands solutions with society and government shared efforts. Data collection was conducted in 2012 through a stratified random sampling. The margin of error for 586 respondents was 5% at the 95% confidence level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]