C' Sim' Angóre (We're Still Here)

This thesis explores the complex challenges and emergent grassroots responses in Taranto, Italy. Taranto is presented as a post-industrial city profoundly marked by the environmental and social costs imposed by the ILVA steel plant, often described as a sacrifice zone. Despite pervasive urban decline, devastating environmental damage from toxic alloys, and a negative narrative linked to industrial monoculture and political failures, residents are actively engaged in acts of resistance and reimagination. The central question guiding this study is: To what extent do practices of bottom-up regenerative placemaking in Taranto foster residents' resilience? Resilience is framed not merely as survival or passive adaptation, but as an active process of surviving, adapting, and resisting the structural harm inflicted by extractive urbanism. Drawing on a theoretical framework that combines regenerative placemaking, affective atmospheres, and resilience as transformation, the thesis posits that urban regeneration is not simply a physical process but is deeply emotionally embedded and collectively navigated. Employing a multi-modal qualitative methodology, including semi-structured interviews, one focus group, and two participant observations with diverse residents - activists, artists, students, and workers - the research gives voice to how regeneration is lived and imagined amidst the city's rusted ground. Findings, conceptualised through the metaphors of Steel, Fire, and Water, reveal how the legacy of ILVA has created a forged dependence and landscapes of grief, yet also ignites acts of collective 'fire' through cultural initiatives and flows into the 'water' of sowing common futures. These grassroots cultural and civic initiatives - such as the Comitato Cittadini e Lavoratori Liberi e Pensanti (CCLLP), CREST, Post Disaster Rooftops (PDR), Taranto Futura, Mercato Nuovo, and Casa Viola - function as quiet insurgencies and critical cultural infrastructures of resistance. They actively challenge dominant narratives, foster profound affective belonging, and empower residents to imagine and work towards alternative post-ILVA futures. This bottom-up agency generates a sense of affective ownership, enabling residents to reclaim their right to the city, health, and unpoisoned ground through collective acts of care and repair that defy institutional distrust. The thesis contributes to broader debates on post-industrial urbanism by highlighting the potential of grassroots agency in fostering emotional, political, and ecological resilience in cities scarred by structural harm. It emphasises that regeneration involves dwelling with brokenness, reclaiming wounded spaces, and weaving new relational fabrics, rooted in local lifeworlds and continuous engagement.