Trend data about the confluence of precarious work, makeshift housing, and expensive and intermittent access to essential services like water and energy in the context of dramatic youthful population growth instil an incurable desire for ‘catalytic solutions’. Since I spend too much of my time pondering over the spatial intersection of these and other trend lines – within the vortex of probability, it is difficult not to succumb to despair. This despair can of course be a badge of honour in a half decent university, but I have little interest in, or use for, this form of intellectual cachet. On the contrary, morbid fascination with the inevitability of the status quo demands a counterpoint; it calls out for a different sensibility.