Fictional,yet real: Worlding informality in cities of the Global South

Abstract

In this note, I discuss the temporal dimension of informal settlement planning and development through a theoretical lens of expectations and decision-making. Prevailing approaches tend to generate a conceptual impasse. While orthodox economics is organized around rational expectations, present-value accounting, and the alignment between planning and realized outcomes, political economy emphasizes fictitious capital as a speculative claim on an inherently unknowable future. I develop the concept of fictional expectations—that is, expectations that have the potential to create a world of their own—as a way out of this impasse and contribute to revisable mid-level theories on the relational production of contemporary informal settlements and their entanglements with urban space. Using the trajectory of favela upgrading in Brazil, I illustrate the potential of this concept for “worlding” informal settlements in the urban Global South.