Page 347 - 360.revista de Alta Velocidad - Nº 6

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número 6 - junio - 2018. Pág 345 - 361

A methodological approach to analyze the territorial appropriation

of high-speed rail from interactions between actions and
representations of local actors

Facchinetti-Mannone, Valérie

University of Burgundy
1

Abstract
In response to the difficulties in discriminating the specific transport impact from other factors
influencing economic and spatial development, researchers are now focusing more on understanding
the process by which territorial changes occur to explain how economic and social agents and local
authorities have appropriated the new transportation system. This appropriation plays a crucial
part in the territorial dynamics. The diversity of economic and spatial changes produced by high-
speed rail indicates the existence of multiple modes of appropriation which vary according to the
location of stations, the mobilization of local stakeholders confronted with the transport operators’
logic and the geographical and historical context of the infrastructure implementation.
Appropriation is defined as a dialogical and identity process that must be explained in order to
facilitate the understanding of the gradual and mutual adjustments between the transportation
system and the territory. The analysis of the mechanisms of high-speed rail transport appropriation
opens up new research opportunities in the quest to respond to a three-pronged issue:
- firstly, the issue of improving the understanding of the relation between the agents involved
in the territorialization of the transport infrastructure by analyzing the interrelation between
transport practices, the functioning of firms and development projects;
- Secondly, the issue of observing the “image” effect linked to the individual and collective
representations of high-speed rail;
- and lastly, the issue of examining the temporal dimension of the territorialization process.
Thus, my contribution rests on the conception of an analysis grid to explain how appropriation has
gradually taken shape throughout the various stages of the high-speed line project. Inspired by
Brunel and Roux‘s research work on consumers’ habits, this analytical grid aims at reporting on the
modes of HSR appropriation, emphasizing the temporality of the process. Appropriation is, in fact,
a long-term evolutionary process which has started long before the implementation of the new
infrastructure and continues even after the trivialization of its uses.

Keywords: High-speed rail, territorialization process, appropriation, practices and representations, image
effect.

1 Facchinetti-Mannone,Valérie. University of Burgundy. Email: valerie.mannone@u-bourgogne.fr

International Congress on High-speed Rail: Technologies and Long Term Impacts - Ciudad Real (Spain) - 25th anniversary Madrid-Sevilla corridor 345