Futuring the volatile city: speculation and anticipatory politics of land subsidence in Java

This article explores the intricacies of futures‐making in urbanizing deltas. My aim is to move beyond linear narratives of submergence to craft more nuanced and empirically accurate descriptions of how futures are made in fluid and unsettled landscapes. Conceptually, I contend that the vocabulary of volatility helps advance research at the intersection of urban and coastal futures. I ground this study on the outskirts of the Indonesian coastal city of Semarang, where residents navigate the conjunction of land subsidence (hydrogeologic volatility) and predatory speculative land acquisitions (economic volatility). I call this speculation on the uncertain future of damaged coastal areas trading, volatility. My analysis hinges on two practices of anticipation that I use as a method to understand how people craft opportunities despite and out of volatility – mapping land ownership and elevating roads and houses. By documenting their anticipatory function, I draw attention to how residents engage themselves and their neighbourhoods in open‐ended and plural forms of futuring (making‐knowing futures). This article concludes with a reflection on the kinds of politics anticipation and speculation generate not so much in terms of resistance or retreat, but a subtler attunement to and subversion of economic and biophysical volatilities.