This chapter examines the forms of temporality and futurity produced by the politics of security and the government of risk. It does so by examining temporal framings, practices, and sensibilities among architects and engineers charged with the technical designation of “zones of high risk,” government social workers who manage the resettlement of “at risk” populations, and inhabitants of the self-built settlements of the urban periphery, where the majority of high-risk zones are located. It shows how the future becomes the common ground of both urban politics and government, and how both the state and the urban poor engage in projects to make and remake the city within an anticipatory domain. However, as counterintuitive as it may sound, risk management and its predictive calculations of harm are not incompatible with modernist visions of urban futurity and progressive temporalities of development.
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