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Paper short abstract

The paper explores Bagnoli’s redevelopment through "anticipatory regimes" and "socio-technical imaginaries." It examines how the 2027 America’s Cup and seismic risk reconfigure expertise, contesting the legitimacy of local knowledge in the governance of resilient urban futures.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines the redevelopment of Bagnoli, a former steelmaking district in western Naples (Italy), as a case study of how different forms of scientific expertise are mobilised and contested in urban governance under conditions of environmental risk and uncertainty. In recent decades, the area has been the focus of significant public investments for environmental remediation and urban regeneration, while also facing the ongoing bradyseismic crisis affecting the Phlegraean Fields.

Recent policy changes have reshaped previous remediation plans to restore the original coastal morphology and remove the industrial landfill created during the twentieth century, in order to accelerate infrastructural works linked to hosting the America’s Cup sailing competition in 2027, prioritising the construction of a new tourist marina.

Adopting an STS perspective, the paper analyses the controversy surrounding the America’s Cup as an arena where multiple epistemic cultures intersect. Government agencies, scientific institutions, urban planners, private developers, citizen committees, and local residents mobilise heterogeneous forms of knowledge—scientific, technical, experiential, and local—to frame competing visions of environmental remediation, ecological risk, and urban futures.

Drawing on concepts such as co-production, civic epistemologies, and anticipatory regimes, the study explores how different knowledge infrastructures are assembled in the governance of large urban projects. It investigates how anticipatory narratives of economic revitalization, ecological safety, and territorial resilience shape the legitimacy of expertise and the inclusion—or marginalization—of local knowledge. The Bagnoli case highlights how urgency and future-oriented imaginaries reconfigure the organization of scientific advice, while simultaneously generating sites of contestation over participatory and just urban futures.