Page 356 - 360.revista de Alta Velocidad - Nº 6

Facchinetti-Mannone,Valérie.

4. Methods of analysis of the territorial appropriation of high-speed rail

4.1 Reconstitution of the trajectories of high-speed rail appropriation

According to the proposed framework, the adopted diachronic approach allows to understand
the progressive construction of appropriation during the different stages of the project. As
the research devoted to the sociology of uses has emphasized (Flichy, 1995 ; Jouet, 2000 ;
Chambat, 1994), new uses do not come out of nowhere but they prolong previous practices
incorporating the reproduction of existing configurations into the progressive construction of
new social or spatial structures. Thus, different methodological approaches, specific to each
sequence previously identified, are suggested to understand the diversity of the trajectories
of the appropriation of the new transport supply. The objectives are to show, on the one
hand, how the appropriation forms that have been developed during the genesis of the project
have had repercussions on strategies and practices observed later on and to explain, on the
other hand, how the interrelations between the different stakeholders’ actions stimulate the
territorial appropriation of high-speed rail. Therefore, my presentation envisages three types
of analysis, modelled on the stages of the realization of a high-speed line (see figure 3):

- Focused on the political logics that occur during the territorialization process of high-speed rail,
the first analysis suggests a geopolitical interpretation of actions, negotiations, compromises
and possible conflicts that have led to the choice of the high-speed line and the location of
stations. It will be necessary to identify the actors involved in the decision-making process
according to their scale of intervention and their degree of mobilization. While the genesis of
the project mainly involves political and institutional actors beside transport operators, the
other categories of actors -through the associations and consular structures that represent
them- are not absent from the debates. The analysis of their actions, in relation to the positions
expressed and the arguments developed by each of them during the consultation phase, will
allow me to clarify their respective roles in the decision-making process. The identification
of the nature, the intensity and the evolution of the relationships that have been established
between the different stakeholders will help characterize the actors’ interactions and to specify
their influence on the spatial integration of stations according to the geographical, historical
and political contexts of the implementation of the HSR projects.
Several types of data will be collected to reduce the pitfalls involved in the retrospective
reconstruction of facts and decisions that have marked out the different stages of the projects.
Reports and studies produced during the preparation of the HSR project, press articles and
interviews with the various actors involved in the choice of the location of stations, lend
themselves to a geopolitical rereading of the actors’ interactions during the territorialization
process. The adopted approach also allows me to analyze the documentary resources produced
during the consultations which punctuated the implementation of the project. The deliberations
taken by the various local authorities, the documents resulting from the public inquiries and,
for more recent projects, the reports and working papers of the public debate provide rich
research materials which have not been much exploited up to now. An exploratory study of
the documents resulting from the public debate questioning the opportunity of the high-speed
line Paris-Orléans-Clermont-Ferrand-Lyon and particularly a qualitative study of the fears
and expectations expressed in the contributions dedicated to the territorial development,
(Maréchal, 2014) revealed the diversity of the “pre-appropriation” and ”pre-acquisition” logics
aroused by the project according to actors’political and spatial affiliation.
Centred on a systemic approach, the second analysis meant to assess the coherence and
complementarity of the strategies and actions accompanying the project will allow me to
re-examine the co-constructed dimension of appropriation in connection with the exogenous
dynamics that affect the functioning of the territorial system. In this second phase, appropriation

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