In this article, I disclose the imagined futures of M4H, as part of Rotterdam Makers District, and imagined by Rotterdam Port Authority and Rotterdam Municipality. By employing the concepts Sociotechnical Imaginaries, processes of place-framing, and the right to the city, I generated a four-fold analysis on the edge of a future. A future, that is not only an imagined or idealized future, but also a future very much materialized and normalized into existence. Next to applying a Critical Discourse Analysis of interviews, social-media posts, the website of M4H, and the Spatial Framework, I conducted a narrative walk, with which another outlook on M4H, from the street level up, came into light.

M4H, as part of Rotterdam Makers District, is an area substantiated in its promises for a future-proof future. A future that is at the same time contrasting with, as well as embedded in this desolated, raw edge of the historical Merwevierhavens in Rotterdam. This take on Makers Districts and their promised virtue in city life, adds to a critical debate on the politics and narratives of city-making in a post-industrial society.

The findings emphasize the promises embedded in M4H's vision of a future-proof future, highlighting its potential impact on city life and marginalized groups. Therein, this research serves as a valuable addition to the academic discourse on place-making and imaginations, offering insights into the dynamics between public values, and social innovation within urban contexts. It emphasizes the need for inclusive and participatory approaches that account for diverse perspectives and voices in the processes of envisioning and creating 'the future' in urban spaces.

The international standard for humanitarian action is increasingly encouraged to implement a more collaborative approach in disaster response. Various scholars stated that network and collaboration are inevitable in disaster response settings. However, analysing the real nature of collaboration which increases the understanding of the practical implementation during disaster response, still requires more discussion. Various discussion about the challenges in developing collaboration in various settings, including disaster response, is important to encourage understanding of how to resolve it. Drawing on fieldwork in Indonesia, this paper analyses the disaster response experience during the 2018 West Nusa Tenggara Province earthquake in Indonesia to answer a question about the nature of collaboration in disaster response.

This study searched for relevant situation reports and secondary data online to gather information about institution involvement during disaster response and create network structure. The network structure is the initial stage in analysing the relationship and nature of collaboration between government and non-government organisations. Sixty-six informants were interviewed during fieldwork in the West Nusa Tenggara Province and DKI Jakarta Province in 2022. The informants are stakeholders who had a role and involvement during the disaster response in 2018, representing the central government, provincial government, regency or city government, academicians, non-government organisations, and faith-based organisations.

The perspective of collaboration as an innovation to improve performance has been known in various disciplines, such as public administration, education, sociology, economics, and criminology, and various sectors, such as climate change, disasters, services, health, and others. This research focuses on the public administration field that highlights the transition of its paradigm that encourages a more collaborative service. The public administration paradigm has experienced a changing perspective from the old public administration to the new public management, the new public services, and the new public governance. This study uses a collaborative governance perspective as a theoretical framework to understand the collaboration process and define the nature of collaboration.

Collaboration is challenging, and this study tries to define the nature of collaboration among actors in a decentralised country with the central role of government. This study proposes that collaboration in a disaster response setting, particularly in a developing country, will be dynamic. The researcher will analyse factual conditions that increase the dynamic nature of the collaboration process.

The researcher finds various problems during data collection and analysis. The COVID-19 restriction pushes the researcher to conduct a virtual interview to complete face-to-face interviews. Developing a network structure from incomplete secondary data, which is publicly available, becomes a challenge in data analysis. The usage of network analysis to create a preliminary analysis of actors’ involvement during disaster response and combine it with a collaborative governance perspective is new. A rigorous discussion with practitioners and public administration academics is very relevant to this study.