The Italian photographer Alessandro Imbriaco explored the idea of "temporary autonomous zones" in Italy in a five year project.

Temporary autonomous zones in the 1980s referred to the often illegal makeshift communities that were being created in cities and remote rural areas by squatters, travellers and the various alternative communities living outside society's norms. The term now also applies to the many illegal urban communities – made up mostly of migrant workers and their families – that have sprung up in European cities over the past decade or so. Many have become semi-permanent settlements, existing almost invisibly on the edges of mainstream society.

AIdroscalois is the area by the mouth of the Tiber, just 10 kilometres from Rome. The community living there is a mixture of migrants from Eastern Europe and poor Italians.

The equivalent squatting camps in Australia would be those of the Aboriginal people in towns like Alice Springs in the Northern territory.