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A methodological approach to analyze the territorial appropriation of high-speed rail from interactions
between actions and representations of local actors

of this pre-acquisition stage. The balances of power between proponents and opponents of the
project and/or between competing territories, reflect the conflictual dimension of appropriation
in a quest for a progressive coherence between local actors’ expectations and the transport
operator’s logic. As the “Cours des Comptes” has pointed out in a recent report (2014) devoted
to high-speed rail, these initial consultations contribute to fixing the project into local reality,
as it is shown by the beginning of the considerations on the strategies to be implemented to
take advantage of the real or alleged opportunities of the arrival of high-speed rail.
From the choice of the HSR route to the Declaration of Public Utility, a phase during which the
technical and spatial characteristics of the project are defined together with the stakeholders
concerned, appropriation changes its nature, getting closer to the sequence of “appropriation
during acquisition” that Brunel and Roux have defined as a phase of choice of conditions the
most appropriate to the realization of the desire. If the choices of the HSR route and location
of stations reduce the scope of possibilities they give a symbolic weight to the project which
becomes identified with the served territory. During this stage, the territorial agents negotiate
the best conditions to give concrete expressions to their expectations with the infrastructure
operator and they conceive the development strategies to convert the improvement of
accessibility into attractiveness.

From the Declaration of Public Utility to the completion of the infrastructure works, «
l’appropriation pré-consommation constitue une phase intermédiaire où l’objet n’est pas
encore consommé et incorporé, mais préparé et intégré dans une mise en scène préalable
à sa consommation» (Brunel et Roux, 2006). During this particularly active phase of mutual
3
adjustments between representations and expectations, territorial actors take hold of the
project and give it a meaning by adopting the first accompanying measures, initiating the
negotiations on HSR services and elaborating territorial marketing campaigns.

The opening of the HSR line marks the transition to the stage of appropriation while consuming.
The expectations created by the new transportation supply among the different categories of
actors are submitted to reality and lead to positive or negative evaluations (Brunel and Roux,
2006). This appropriation by use, which marks the gradual integration of the new transport supply
into users’ and economic actors’ travel practices and territorial development strategies, indicates
successive adjustments between the territory and the new transport system. Finally, the post-
consumption appropriation, that accompanies the trivialization of the transport supply, refers to
what the territory retains from its experience according to the expectations created by the project.
Becoming an integral part of the territorial identity, high-speed rail is, at this stage, integrated
into territorial actors’ everyday life, contributing, through the story-telling of the project, to the
orientation of attitudes and beliefs in future situations of choice (Brunel and Roux, 2006).
Although the complete grid proposed by Brunel and Roux to analyse individuals’ appropriation
acts in a context of food consumption could easily be applied to the various stages of an HSR
project for understanding the territorialization of stations, its transposition nevertheless raises
a few remarks which require further clarification. Even if HSR gives access to new destinations
and alters the image of served territories, it is not an ordinary consumer product. Thus, it
will be necessary to re-examine the appropriative dimension of HSR stations in the light of
the relations that the various actors maintain with these places and the forms of territorial
appropriation that they may generate. The transposition of analytical methods designed to
describe individuals’ appropriate actions to the questions posed by the territorialization of high-
speed rail also requires caution and circumspection. Indeed, even if individual appropriation
remains a collective process (Taddei and Staii, 2008), territorial appropriation cannot be reduced
to the aggregation of forms of individual appropriations but is built through the interactions of
the appropriation logics of the various categories of actors.
3 [Translation: " pre-consumption appropriation constitutes an intermediate stage during which the object is not yet
consumed and incorporated, but prepared and integrated into a staging prior to its consumption"]

International Congress on High-speed Rail: Technologies and Long Term Impacts - Ciudad Real (Spain) - 25th anniversary Madrid-Sevilla corridor 353