To extend: Temporariness in a world of itineraries

Abstract

Recent urban analysis has emphasised the ‘big moves’ – planetary scales, extensive processes, major actors, mega-developments and substantial financial flows – important in accounting for a seemingly all-encompassing urbanisation. Still, significant volumes of the urban environment have historically been shaped by the collaborative efforts of residents and their associative institutions. These were collaborations largely operating without formal contracts or consensus, piecing together concrete places capable of holding different practices and sentiments and, as such, rarely became sedentary, even if conditions and power relations might have appeared fixed. These forms included and exceeded clear demarcations of entities (individual, household, social), with, for example, the operations of the digital media increasingly beyond the apprehension of human cognition, making it increasingly unclear ‘who is the what that does something to whom.’ As a result, the terms and economies of such collaborations amongst residents – their acts of autoconstruction – have become more complex and precarious, particularly as residents emphasise the importance of mobility, flexible commitments and individual aspirations. Hence, urban environments are elaborated in ways not captivated by plans, measures or even advanced computational analyses, and there are many ways that residents continue to operate in concert but without discernible mobilisation or organisation. Focusing on temporariness – not as a specific sector or set of practices but as a constellation of efforts to generate something of value – and drawing upon fieldwork across different sites in Indonesia, this lecture explores the new terrain of urban invention by poor, working and lower middle-class residents in the wake of its purported demise.