Abitare la soglia. Tra scuola e città per la giustizia ambientale a Limache, Cile

In a global context marked by growing social, territorial, and environmental inequalities, schools can act as civic infrastructures capable of linking education, space, and ecology in ways that foster environmental justice. This paper presents insights from field research conducted in Limache, Chile, in collaboration with Fundación Escala Común within the PAMEPI project (Plan de Activación de Movilidad y Espacio Público para la Infancia). Through participatory and situated methodologies, the project engaged children, families, schools, and local actors in re-signifying everyday urban spaces, identifying the threshold areas between school and city as strategic sites for ecological regeneration, active mobility, and collective use. The analysis focuses on the transformative potential of school proximities, conceived as distributed and relational devices anchored in public infrastructure, capable of enabling practices of care, ecological learning, and environmental citizenship. Precisely because of these characteristics, such spaces emerge as tools of environmental justice that resist the extractive dynamics of green gentrification and support inclusive practices rooted in local contexts. The contribution situates itself within the debate on environmental justice in the Global South, questioning how schools can act as nodes in socio-ecological transitions by reconfiguring proximity as a relational, political, and educational category.