The scale and patterns of urbanization today challenges the notion of permanence as the default condition for cities. Rubrics like informality have meanwhile become counter-productive, as they also implicitly aspire to create new processes in imagining permanence. Does permanence, as the sole instrument in urban imaginaries, really matter? For the over 700 million people represented in this research, stability is a luxury! Permanence is not an affordable condition and does not really affect their daily existence. What does this then mean for architecture and the city?