Futures at the edge: Archiving community imaginaries in Naples, Italy

Sacrifice zones – territories marked by environmental contamination and socio-economic marginalisation – embody inequalities produced by uneven capitalist development. These socio-spatial formations are produced through the uneven distribution of environmental burdens and through spatial imaginaries that render certain places and populations expendable, normalise degradation, and constrain alternative possibilities. This article contributes to environmental justice debates by examining how future imaginaries are articulated in environmentally burdened territories in the metropolitan area of Naples, Italy. Drawing on affirmative and imaginative approaches in geography, political ecology, and environmental humanities, we conceptualise imagination as a collective and political practice through which communities challenge narratives of inevitability and reclaim the capacity to define what their territories are and what they might yet become. Between September and November 2024, we conducted participatory and speculative workshops across three sacrifice zones (56 participants), complemented by a pop-up engagement station at an environmental festival (39 participants). While participants found harm – such as contamination and urban neglect – easier to narrate than value, they generated future imaginaries grounded in existing ecological, cultural, and civic resources. These included remediating contaminated land, reclaiming access to the sea and neglected cultural heritage, and strengthening civil society networks as infrastructures for territorial transformation.