San Martino Valle Caudina is a small municipality of approximately 4900 inhabitants located at the foot of the Partenio mountain range, in the inland areas of the Campania region, between Sannio and Irpinia. A relatively ordinary place in terms of territorial and socio-economic configuration, it is largely absent from collective imagination and, in turn, struggling to envision its own future. In a historical moment marked by a considerable difficulty in projecting individual desires and collective aspirations beyond the present — a condition Valentina Pellegrino1 describes as a gradual ‘evaporation’ of the future as a shared and widespread construct — this phenomenon appears even more acute in areas experiencing territorial distress, whether urban or rural. The apparent inevitability of certain processes generates a perception of inertia, one that stifles the capacity to imagine alternative futures.