Recovering communities and places through images. The case of the Land of Fires - Italy

The Land of Fires, surely the most powerful assemblage of wasted territories across the Italian peninsula, has ever since constantly depicted by the media as a kind of biblical apocalypse due to the consequences of a twenty years old process of environmental degradation on human health and local economy. The case highlights the power of images in dealing with the new “urban question” that environmental issues pose. As a case of powerful s-regulation, and a symbol of more general disruptions between space and society, the Land of Fires is the metaphor of the national incapability to fight criminal entrepreneurialism and to arbitrate in public health and socio-environmental justice issues. In comparing the aforementioned urban region with an unbalanced ecosystem in the face of dynamics connected to the metabolism of waste, the paper suggests to invest on images and tales of resistance as a strategy to boost community resilience in a radical planning perspective.