Paper short abstract:

Visions of future living in Johannesburg’s affluent suburbs cultivate imaginaries of desirable urban spaces regardless of such visions materialising in the landscape. These moments of becoming provide a lens to explore how pasts, presents and futures interlock in everyday practices of future-making.

Paper long abstract:

In Johannesburg, a South African metropolis labelled both a “city of extremes” (Murray 2011) and “the African modern” (Nuttall and Mbembe 2008), construction is everywhere – from informal settlements on vacant plots of land to private city developments in the periphery. The city is not only constructed in the physical landscape with bricks, trees, and surveillance technology. This paper, argues that how residential developments and properties for sale are presented both visually and textually, influence how the urban is imagined and how it will continue to develop, regardless of these visions materialising in the urban landscape. The improvisations and negotiations of these seemingly concrete but fleeting futurities show that the cultivation of desirable enclaves and homes in the affluent suburbs are caught in a double bind, embedded both in nostalgia and in global ideals of living detached from the past. Eleven months of ethnographic fieldwork in the northern suburbs of Johannesburg, following various actors in the residential real estate industry uncovered that actors in the sector play an important role in cultivating desirable imaginaries of enclaves and homes. Advertisements, miniature models on property expos and conversations about development plans are moments of becoming that provide a lens to explore ethnographically how everyday practices of future-making in a postcolonial setting are interlocked with imaginaries and practices of pasts and presents.