Both authors declare that they have equally contributed to the following phases of the research: conceptualization, fieldwork activities, data collection, analysis, methodology, writing, review and editing of the paper. The authors would like to thank Prof. Mirko Alagna, who co-organized the study trip, and the students for their priceless participation and engagement during the field activities.
1In recent years, degrowth has gained increasing traction as a conceptual and political framework for rethinking socio-ecological futures beyond the dominant imperatives of economic expansion and capitalist development (Bernard et al., 2003; Latouche, 2022). Often mobilized in response to ecological crisis, social inequality, and the exhaustion of conventional models of growth, degrowth challenges the assumption that more ⎼ of production, consumption, infrastructure ⎼ is necessarily better (Latouche, 2022). However, rather than providing a fixed or prescriptive agenda, degrowth is more accurately understood as a field of contested imaginaries: a plural, dynamic space where alternative visions, values, and territorial trajectories are articulated, negotiated, and sometimes instrumentalized (Akbulut et al., 2021; D’Alisa et al., 2014; Kallis and March, 2015).
2This paper engages with degrowth as a situated imaginary, exploring how it is made meaningful in specific contexts marked by structural uncertainty and overlapping crises. We focus on the case of La Doganaccia, a small winter tourism locality in the upper Lima Valley (Tuscan-Emilian Apennines, province of Pistoia), where climate instability, demographic decline, and infrastructural fragility converge. The area offers a telling example of how degrowth is not simply an abstract theoretical model for socio-economic redesign, but a narrative and symbolic resource that different actors draw on ⎼ sometimes in contradictory ways ⎼ to make sense of local transformations. In particular, we examine the controversy surrounding the proposed construction of a new cable car connecting La Doganaccia to Prato alla Nevosa. Framed by the proponents as a sustainable investment to diversify tourism and secure the area’s economic future, and by the opponents as an outdated and ecologically harmful project, the cable car has become a focal point around which multiple spatial imaginaries of degrowth are activated. These imaginaries do not merely reflect ideological positions; they are embedded in broader visions of what the mountain is, should be, or could become.
3Methodologically, the paper is grounded in a qualitative and interpretive approach. It draws on empirical research conducted through six field visits to La Doganaccia and the wider Pistoia Mountains (a mountainous area in the Tuscany Region, forming part of the Northern Apennines; see Figure 1 and 2) between 2023 and 2024. This research benefits from long-term engagement facilitated by University of Florence projects like IDEM (www.progettoidem.it). While originally focused on art-based identity enhancement, these initiatives established the necessary trust for our fieldwork. Primary data collection occurred in spring 2024. In addition to continuous informal conversations with residents during field visits, this fieldwork yielded a total of 18 semi-structured interviews. Participants included local administrators, cultural heritage managers, tourism operators, and agricultural entrepreneurs, alongside targeted interviews with an environmental activist and a Superintendence official. The interview outline investigated personal biographies, perceptions of main local issues and challenges, as well as visions for the future of the territory. Primary data was supplemented by an analysis of secondary sources, including local media reports, planning documents, and protest materials. This methodological triangulation – combining formal and informal oral testimonies with policy and media analysis – enabled us to cross-reference subjective narratives with official discourse, capturing how different actors imagine and seek to reshape the mountain in a time of transition.
4The paper proceeds as follows. First, we situate the theoretical lens of spatial imaginaries within the literature on degrowth and mountain geography. Second, we contextualize the case of La Doganaccia, detailing the socio-economic dynamics of the upper Lima Valley. Third, we analyze the cable car debate, demonstrating how conflicting imaginaries – transformational, idealized, and place-based – operate as performative devices that structure conflict. Finally, we conclude by reflecting on the utility of this framework for understanding degrowth transitions. In doing so, the paper foregrounds the spatial nature of degrowth, offering a situated account of how these narratives are negotiated in peripheral mountain contexts.
5In the last years, degrowth scholarship has become increasingly heterogeneous, encompassing philosophical, socio-anthropological, political-economic, and biophysical approaches. These range from critiques of capitalism and its ideology of growth (Akbulut et al., 2021; Gorz, 1977; Latouche, 2005) to analyses of socio-metabolic transitions (Schneider et al., 2010), and tracing connections between degrowth and ecofeminist (Abazeri, 2022) or postdevelopment perspectives (Barca, 2017; Escobar, 2015), and empirical inquiries into alternative livelihoods and territorial governance. In this paper, we align with those perspectives that treat degrowth not as a fixed doctrine or normative policy agenda, but as an imaginary ⎼ or more precisely, a constellation of spatial imaginaries ⎼ that circulate diverse visions of change and transition (Akbulut et al., 2021; D’Alisa et al., 2014; Kallis and March, 2015).
6In geography, spatial imaginaries provide a powerful lens for analyzing and interpreting how the world is represented, conceived, and culturally constructed ⎼ both in general theoretical terms (Gregory, 1994; Debarbieux, 2015) and in relation to specific areas of inquiry (Massey, 1999). Among other fields of application, the mountain has been repeatedly analyzed in terms of imaginaries that are crucial in shaping its representations, as well as its material and symbolic production and reproduction (Bätzing, 2005; Debarbieux, 1989; Dematteis, 2020; Miossec, 1977; Raffestin, 2001). Accordingly, spatial imaginaries, as conceptualized by Watkins (2015), are not merely passive representations but performative and contested narratives. They shape and legitimize particular spatial arrangements while also enabling actors to imagine and mobilize alternative socio-spatial configurations. Watkins distinguishes between three interrelated types of spatial imaginaries that intersect in degrowth discourses: (1) spatial transformation imaginaries, which frame large-scale processes of change (e.g., globalization, ecological transition, and degrowth); (2) idealized space imaginaries, which construct normative visions of what certain types of space ⎼ such as the “rural”, the “village”, or the “inland” ⎼ should be; and (3) place imaginaries, which attribute specific values, functions, and futures to particular localities (e.g. framing a specific mountain peak as a “strategic tourist asset” versus an “ecological sanctuary”).
7Drawing on Watkins’ typology, we refer to spatial imaginaries not to prescribe how degrowth could redesign mountain territories, but rather to problematize how degrowth itself can be spatialized, interpreted, and negotiated in relation to them. As a spatial transformation imaginary, degrowth questions dominant development paradigms in mountain regions but does not offer a coherent or universally accepted alternative. As degrowth is actually “nowhere to be seen” (Kallis and March, 2015, p. 361), its invocation often intersects with narratives of radical transformation of current economic development models, but it can also be co-opted into strategic discourses that perpetuate existing hierarchies and power structures. Tourism, a key sector in mountain economies, embodies this ambiguity (Balaguer, 2020; Bourdeau, 2022; Chambru et al., 2024; Chambru and De Oliveira, 2021; Dansero and Puttilli, 2012). While some degrowth narratives align with soft or slow tourism models (or even with the absence of tourism as a desirable scenario), others leave room for contradictory practices that maintain tourism-led development under new rhetorical guises. Degrowth also mobilizes idealized space imaginaries, frequently drawing on longstanding cultural representations of mountains as spaces of purity, authenticity, or retreat. These imaginaries, though potentially aligned with values of sufficiency and ecological care, risk essentializing rurality, obscuring complexity, and legitimizing exclusion ⎼ especially when oriented toward the aesthetic or emotional needs of outsiders (Bätzing, 2005; Miossec, 1977; Varotto, 2020). For instance, they may reproduce romanticized visions of the mountain as a refuge from (post)modernity, while ignoring the material and political conditions that shape life in marginal areas. Finally, place imaginaries are central to understanding how degrowth is grounded, contested, and refracted in specific mountain settings. These imaginaries reflect the lived experiences, socio-spatial histories, and situated knowledge of communities navigating the ambivalences of degrowth discourses. They illuminate how different actors position themselves within shifting narratives of transition, resilience, and justice, especially in territories affected by demographic decline, limited infrastructure, or dependence on seasonal economies.
8These three types of spatial imaginaries are not isolated but deeply interwoven, often operating simultaneously and at multiple scales. Winter stations offer a particularly illustrative example. Historically shaped by large-scale infrastructural investments and embedded in a productivist vision of the mountains as recreational resources, winter stations today face significant and overlapping crises ⎼ especially climatic and economic (Bourdeau, 2022; Hatt and Claeys, 2024; Dematteis and Nardelli, 2022). The decline in snow reliability, the volatility of tourism markets, and rising maintenance costs challenge the viability of a model that, for decades, defined the spatial and symbolic development of many Alpine and non-Alpine areas. At the same time, these spaces are materially and symbolically dense: their infrastructures are deeply embedded in the local landscape, and their identities closely tied to narratives of progress and modernity. As such, winter stations display strong inertia to change, due to their path dependence on winter tourism, despite growing awareness of their unsustainability. Similarly, mountain areas that have developed around a winter station-led model show strong economic and infrastructural dependence on it (Balaguer, 2020; Dansero and Puttilli, 2012; Gros-Balthazard et al., 2024). These dynamics intertwine with an image of the landscape ⎼ the high mountain ⎼ as the quintessential “pristine” and “pure” natural environment, and simultaneously as an impervious place to be inhabited or reached, as in mountaineering, with courage (Bätzing, 2005).
9La Doganaccia is a small hamlet in the municipality of Abetone-Cutigliano (1,826 inhabitants in 2025 according to ISTAT-Italian National Statistical Institute, 2025), located at an altitude of 1,800 meters just below the ridge of the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines (Fig. 1). With currently only four registered residents (field interviews), it connects to Cutigliano (678 m) via a cable car spanning a vertical drop of about 900 meters. Originally built in the 1950s – according to local residents – to support livestock grazing, the infrastructure was soon repurposed for tourism. Today, it anchors the local ski area managed by the private company Doganaccia 2000, which includes 15 km of slopes and three lifts. The settlement itself consists largely of second homes developed between the 1970s and 1980s, which reportedly remain unoccupied for most of the year.
Figure 1. The upper Lima Valley seen from the ridge. On the right side, the arrival station of the Cutigliano-Doganaccia cable car
Source: picture taken by the Authors.
10The upper Lima Valley is officially designated as a peripheral area under the Strategia Nazionale Aree Interne (SNAI), a policy framework for Italy’s most remote territories (De Rossi, 2019). As such, it exemplifies Varotto’s (2020) montagne di mezzo: intermediate mountain areas lacking a clear economic vocation yet capable of challenging dominant narratives of marginality.
11La Doganaccia reflects the socio-economic dynamics of the wider Pistoia mountains, where the economy has long depended on winter tourism. The 2020 Territorial Coordination Plan explicitly defines tourism as “the only real resource for the mountain economy,” a model driven largely by the nearby Abetone ski resort. However, this monoculture is increasingly fragile. Rising temperatures and irregular snowfall have compromised the winter season, a crisis felt acutely in the upper Lima Valley (400-1,547 m a.s.l.), which is facing climate instability ahead of many Alpine regions.
12Concurrently, the area has suffered severe depopulation. Since 1971, the municipality has lost roughly 36% of its inhabitants (see Table 1). Such a decrease, driven by the decline of traditional agro-forestry and the allure of industrial centers on the plain, is further exacerbated by inadequate road infrastructure that makes daily commuting difficult. As a local resident explains:
One of my sons works here, but the other one works in Pistoia and lives there. If this blessed road had been built, he could have come back home and slept here. But instead, what can he do? Is this road supposed to stay like this? What are these young people supposed to do? Either they find work here or they have to leave, there’s no other choice!
13While areas in the middle valley, closer to the cities of Pistoia and Florence, have retained a more stable demographic profile and some industrial activity, the small settlements of the upper valley have been considerably more affected. According to official statistics from the Regione Toscana’s demographic office, the province of Pistoia increased its population from 268,503 in 2001 to 290,036 in 2025. In contrast, the municipality of Abetone-Cutigliano saw a decline from 2,404 to 1,826 in the same period (Table 1).
Table 1: population variations from 1971 to 2025
|
|
1971
|
1981
|
1991
|
2001
|
2011
|
2021
|
2025
|
|
Regione Toscana
|
3.473.097
|
3.581.051
|
3.529.946
|
3.497.806
|
3.672.202
|
3.692.865
|
3.660.834
|
|
Provincia di Pistoia
|
254.335
|
264.995 .
|
264.622 .
|
268.503
|
287.645
|
290.245
|
290.036
|
|
Abetone
|
833
|
821
|
758
|
705
|
687
|
1.973
|
1.826
|
|
Cutigliano
|
2.035
|
1.893
|
1.827
|
1.699
|
1.561
|
Elaboration from Regione Toscana’s demographic office official statistics and ISTAT, 2025.
14Here, residents often describe the combined effects of tourism decline, service deprivation, and depopulation as sources of profound uncertainty. The owner of Doganaccia 2000 described the situation as “the death of villages”, evoking the “disappearance” of the material and institutional conditions that had previously sustained a tourism-based economy.
15Within this context, local stakeholders elaborated a series of responses that, although still linked to tourism, reframe it in terms of slow mobility, environmental education, and the valorization of cultural and agricultural heritage. For example, during the snowless winter of 2023-2024, local tourism operators at Doganaccia 2000 repurposed their facilities to accommodate school groups and offer orienteering and outdoor activities. These initiatives attracted approximately 20,000 visitors, effectively “securing the tourist season”, as the promoter of the initiative puts it. Several farms in the upper valley have adopted multifunctional models that combine agricultural production with agritourism and environmental education. Many of these enterprises now promote short food supply chains and leverage the mountain environment as a distinctive element to enhance the quality and identity of local agri-food products. From a cultural perspective, the Ecomuseo della Montagna Pistoiese – based in San Marcello Piteglio (altitude 623 meters, 7.483 inhabitants in 2025), in the mid-valley – has developed a program of decentralized heritage interpretation, extending to small hamlets in the upper valley through thematic trails and exhibitions. Additionally, several publicly funded projects have promoted hiking and cycling tourism through infrastructure upgrades, trail restoration, and the installation of electric bike charging stations.
16It is within this context of economic and environmental uncertainty that the proposal for a new cable car between La Doganaccia and Prato alla Nevosa was first advanced by the Province of Pistoia in 2022. The project stems from a 2016 Memorandum of Understanding signed by the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, the Tuscany Region, and the Emilia-Romagna Region, aimed at fostering support for ski facilities in the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines. While the original plan allocated around €5 million for its construction, the revised version raised the estimated cost to nearly €16 million. This increase was attributed to “the resulting need to overcome landscape-related constraints, requiring the adoption of solutions that significantly modified the original plan ⎼ from a ‘standard’ system to a custom-designed cableway ⎼ resulting in a substantial rise in costs” (Province of Pistoia, 2023). The proposed infrastructure would span approximately 2 kilometers, with a vertical elevation gain of around 260 meters, and is officially intended to connect the Tuscan and Emilian slopes of the Apennines, in the proximity of the ski area of Corno alle scale, through a high-altitude transregional corridor. On the Pistoia side, it would link up with the existing cableway system, reinforcing La Doganaccia’s role as a year-round access point to the Apennine ridge (Fig. 2).
Figure 2. Map of the upper Lima valley, including the municipalities of Abetone-Cutigliano and San Marcello Piteglio, and related ski facilities
Source: map elaborated by the Authors on OpenStreetMap data. (last visited: November 10, 2025).
17The cable car project quickly became a flashpoint for debate, mobilizing competing visions of the mountain’s future. For supporters, the cable car is not merely a mobility project but a structural intervention to reconnect fragmented mountain areas and attract investment to a long-marginalized region – “an opportunity not to be missed”, according to an interviewee. Crucially, proponents frame the infrastructure less as a ski lift and more as a sustainable mobility tool to access the popular Lago Scaffaiolo area for summer hiking. They argue this would support off-season tourism and drastically reduce road traffic, citing environmental assessments that found no major ecological barriers.
18Conversely, opposition mobilized in 2023 under the committee Un altro Appennino è possibile, originally launched in 2017 on the Emilian side to contest a similar project (Polla–Scaffaiolo). The committee brings together national actors, including WWF, Legambiente, Mountain Wilderness, the Italian Alpine Club (CAI), as well as grassroots groups and local associations. Their critique is both immediate and strategic: they contest the visual impact of the infrastructure on the high-altitude landscape and question the rationale of such investments amidst accelerating climate uncertainty. For opponents, the project symbolizes a dated and ineffective development model, still wedded to tourism and consumption logics and ignoring ecological realities.
19Currently, the proposal remains stalled by political and administrative deadlocks. Yet, this very impasse has transformed La Doganaccia into a vital testing ground for rethinking Apennine development trajectories through conflicting spatial imaginaries.
20Drawing on Watkins’ typology, we argue that La Doganaccia and the upper Lima Valley can be read as a site where spatial transformation, idealised space, and place imaginaries intersect, revealing how degrowth takes shape as a situated and ambivalent imaginary in intermediate mountain contexts. The debate surrounding the proposed new cable car encapsulates both the contradictions and potential interpretations of degrowth-related imaginaries.
21Firstly, spatial transformation imaginaries are mobilized both to support and to contest the proposed infrastructure. On one side, local business owners, municipal actors, and regional institutions advocate for the cable car as a necessary adaptation to the decline of winter tourism. While these actors tend to associate degrowth with decline, they actively mobilize the concept of sustainability to legitimize the project.
22The new cable car is portrayed as a pragmatic infrastructure enabling a managed transition toward diversified and de-seasonalized forms of tourism: not a means to revive the ski economy per se, but a tool to reposition La Doganaccia as a hub for outdoor activities and nature experiences. From this perspective, the response to socio-ecological limits does not imply the rejection of tourism, but its reconfiguration through ‘softer’ modalities. However, this transformation imaginary remains anchored in a growth-oriented logic: the infrastructure is expected to “secure the mountain” by attracting new flows of visitors, offsetting demographic decline, and preserving the viability of the local economy. As a representative of the local Pro Loco stated:
The problem is this: there is no possibility to work and remain here while supporting a family. That is why we were talking about the cable car which, according to what they say, has a low environmental impact. Really! And you know how much of an impulse it would give, because when we have seen infrastructures that are well managed, they provide jobs, they contribute, they give a huge boost to the economy.
23In this framing, the response to crisis appears less as a rupture than as a rebranding of development, continuing to rely on material investments to address structural challenges. Supporters rely on the project as what has been defined in other contexts as a “magical solution” (Álvarez Rivadulla and Bocarejo, 2014) – emotionally charged (Anderson and Bosworth, 2023) and animated by the hope that technological upgrades can solve complex territorial problems. As one interviewee puts it: “At some point we realized that you couldn’t ski, and we turned the snow project into an outdoor project.” In this sense, the area seems to be transitioning to “l’après-ski” without fully embracing a new local imaginary rooted in “l’après-tourisme” (Bourdeau, 2009).
24At the same time, the project is rejected by the committee Un altro Appennino è possibile. Here, degrowth is evoked through an alternative transformation imaginary, one that questions the very logic of investing in tourism infrastructures amid ecological crisis and socio-economic uncertainty. This vision asserts that a truly degrowth transition requires a deeper rethinking of mountain futures, moving beyond infrastructure, ski tourism, and the productivist narratives that have long shaped the region’s development. Within this imaginary, the cable car is viewed not as a solution to socio-economic decline, but as a symptom of path dependency, a perpetuation of a failing model disguised as ecological modernization. Degrowth, in this case, is articulated as a radical downscaling of human activity and a call for retreat, restraint, and restoration. While both perspectives draw on the language of transformation, they differ fundamentally in how far they are willing to challenge the underlying assumptions about growth, value, and the role of tourism in mountain regeneration.
25Idealised space imaginaries underpin these contrasting positions. Proponents of the cable car evoke a vision of the mountain as a lived, inhabited, and productive space, one that must remain accessible, viable, and connected to broader networks of economic activity. Their discourse emphasizes the need to sustain habitability, counter marginalization, and ensure that mountain territories are not left behind in public policy and regional development agendas. This idealization of the mountain privileges human presence and infrastructure as conditions for resilience, envisioning degrowth as a selective reorientation of investment rather than a retreat. In contrast, opponents of the cable car mobilize an idealized imaginary of the mountain as a predominantly natural place, where the climate crisis is paramount and the desired change centers on the conservation of landscapes and the protection of local flora and fauna. The opposition frames the cable car as “useless”, an outdated development tool incapable of overcoming the centrality of tourism in dominant place imaginaries. In this normative vision, the construction of new lift facilities is seen as incompatible with the ecological and cultural essence of the highlands.
26This approach is evident in the visual materials used in the protest campaign against the cable car, disseminated through social media and the committee’s website (Figure 3). The campaign highlights the aesthetic impact of the proposed infrastructure and draws on highly idealized images of the mountain landscape, in which human presence is either marginal or absent.
Figure 3. Image from the website change.org to promote a petition against the construction of the cable car
Source: https://www.change.org/p/fermiamo-la-costruzione-della-nuova-funivia-doganaccia-corno-alle-scale (last visited: May 23, 2025).
27It is precisely on this terrain – who has the authority to decide the future of the mountain? – that the definition of place imaginaries in the upper Lima Valley is played out, bringing to the fore critical dimensions of procedural justice (Batel, Devine-Wright, 2015). At the center of these imaginaries lies the question of how to define the boundaries and characteristics of the community entitled to make such decisions, and therefore what values and futures should guide the mountain. For cable car supporters, including Doganaccia 2000, Pro Loco representatives, and several local entrepreneurs, opponents are accused of advancing an aestheticized vision of the mountain that neglects the everyday needs of those who live there. By contrast, many interviews inside the valley highlight an imaginary of the place strongly centered around the definition – and the lack – of community. Voices insist that, if only people felt more united, and the Pistoia mountains could present themselves as a single territory, solutions would follow. Some entrepreneurs suggested branding the area as the Florentine mountains, capitalizing on the proximity to Florence. Others point to the absence of a territorial brand (marchio d’area) for local agro-food products as emblematic of this lack of cohesion. As one interviewee explained:
Despite efforts, we do not manage to make community […] because here we are more used to everyone going their own way […]. We should start fighting together for a Pistoia mountain, not for Abetone or for Cutigliano.
28The reference to Abetone and Cutigliano is not accidental. The two municipalities, merged in 2015, embody long-standing rivalries: the referendum that sanctioned the merger revealed a polarized geography of voting, with opposition in Abetone – accused of wanting to maintain the privileges of its ski-based economy – and support in Cutigliano, eager to link itself to the station’s success. These fractures reveal how, from the inside, the very boundaries of the “community” are blurred and shifting. Depending on the perspective, La Doganaccia, Cutigliano, Abetone, the surrounding hamlets, or the larger municipality of San Marcello Piteglio are alternately included in or excluded from the imagined mountain collective, while at the same time blaming each other for failing to achieve real unity of purpose.
29For many, the model to follow is Trentino-Alto Adige, where internal disagreements are thought to be kept behind closed doors, while an image of cohesion is projected externally:
Maybe in other places they sit at the table and argue, but what they show to the outside is different: they show unity. Look at Trentino, which is a master in this.
30The “community yet to come” – an essentialized and pacified view of identity and belonging – is thus invoked both as an explanation for present inaction and as a precondition for legitimizing future decisions. At the same time, this imaginary of community becomes much sharper when projected outward: those who contest the cable car are frequently depicted by supporters as outsiders, not entitled to decide for the mountain.
31Opponents, however, redefine the scale of belonging in broader terms. For them, the mountain cannot be reduced to local rivalries or branding strategies: it is part of a wider ecosystem whose value must be preserved. From this perspective, local actors are not sufficient to decide alone; the authority to speak for the mountain must include broader environmental concerns and ecological publics. In their discourse, the boundaries of the community extend to those able to defend the highlands as commons, beyond the narrow logics of infrastructural development. Ultimately, place imaginaries expose the ambivalence of degrowth as a contested language: not a coherent program, but a terrain where different communities struggle to define who belongs, who is excluded, and who has the right to decide the future of the Pistoia mountains.
32This paper has explored how degrowth can be understood as a set of spatial imaginaries emerging through situated practices, functioning as a contested symbolic field where visions for the future of peripheral mountain areas are negotiated. The case of La Doganaccia winter station serves as a powerful illustration: here, the cable car proposal has transformed degrowth from an abstract concept into a versatile, ambivalent useful conceptual tool, implicitly evoked by social actors locally. Our analysis demonstrates how actors strategically mobilize these discourses to legitimize opposing projects, revealing the deep tensions characterizing the reimagining of mountain development in a degrowth era.
33We applied Watkins’ (2015) framework – distinguishing between spatial transformation, idealized, and place imaginaries – to frame actors’ positionalities. Results highlight that these imaginaries are strongly interdependent rather than separate. Consequently, we argue that the efficacy of an imaginary lies not in its adherence to a single category, but in its strategic articulation and hybridization.
34Empirically, the project’s promoters deploy a place imaginary rooted in local sovereignty – where only the community should decide – fused with a transformative imaginary of “sustainable” adaptation and an idealized imaginary of the mountain as a productive space. In a mirror-like manner, opponents activate an idealized imaginary of the fragile ecosystem, legitimizing a transformative imaginary of a post-tourist economy. They anchor this in a place imaginary defined by ecological quality, thereby expanding the community entitled to “speak” for the mountain to include non-residents.
35Through this lens, the paper highlights that small, marginal mountain regions are critical observatories for understanding how degrowth transitions are negotiated and contextualized into discourse and practice. Future research could build on this foundation through comparative analyses of other mountain settings, revealing patterns in how infrastructural interventions shape the degrowth debate. Moreover, further inquiry should focus on material outcomes, examining longitudinally how these contested imaginaries influence planning regulations and investment flows. Such work would continue to illuminate the crucial role of spatial imaginaries in the difficult, yet necessary, articulation of degrowth futures.