Page 359 - 360.revista de Alta Velocidad - Nº 6

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

affective relationships with places, these representations fully participate in the production of
space. In relation with the practices and strategies they influence, they show how territorial
actors appropriate space and transform it into territory.
Just like the material characteristics of spatial organization, these ideal representations, that are
constructed from the way in which territorial actors perceive and interpret the changes introduced
by high-speed rail, influence and guide individuals’ daily practices and the policies implemented
to facilitate the territorial integration of the new transport supply. The identification of the social
values attached to high speed rail, the understanding of how these values have been constructed
and sometimes exploited, are essential for analyzing spatial practices and implemented strategies.
In order to explore these representations, the speeches of the various actors involved in the
project have been submitted to a semantic analysis which mobilizes the tools and methods of the
content analysis. The different textual and oral sources gathered to study the spatial practices
and strategies linked to the arrival of high-speed rail constitute a relevant material to apprehend
the representations (see figure 3). The words used to describe a project or an object refer to a
mental representation of the real object (Hernandez, 2003). They enlighten the understanding of
spatial practices and the construction of the process of appropriation. Studied from a quantitative
and qualitative approach, the transposition into words and pictures of high-speed rail during
the process reveals distinct forms of appropriation depending on the actors and the territories
served by HSR. The challenge is then to identify how individual and collective representations
affect spatial practices but also to better understand the reciprocal influence that the different
speeches have on each other throughout the temporality of the appropriation process.

At this stage, the approach does not exclude any of the speeches and texts collected in
connection with the reconstruction of the appropriative trajectories (see figure 3). These
corpuses, each in their own ways, make it possible to understand the expectations and fears
created by high-speed rail projects, the multiple representations attached to the location of
HSR stations and the strategies used to develop railroad sites and the added values of the
improvement of accessibility. To decipher these language games, the different textual data
will be the object of a semiological and lexical analysis by mobilizing the tools and methods of
the content analysis (Bardin, 2013 ; Lebart and Salem, 1994, Maingueneau, 1987) that Berelson
defined as "a research technique for the objective, systematic and quantitative description of
the manifest content of communications, with the aim of interpreting them" (Berelson, 1952).
First of all, it will be necessary to analyze the enunciative context of the textual data studied,
not only to situate them in relation to the temporality of HSR projects but also to clearly identify
the elements that influence representations. Indeed, while some of the analyzed speeches are
limited to a restricted circle, others, by their wide diffusion, contribute to the construction of
social norms. This contextual study is based on an identification of the authors of the textual
data and of the people to whom they are addressed, specifying their sphere of influence, their
spatial scale of intervention and their position in the decision-making process. This approach
also needs to determine the motivations of speeches which can take on very distinct tonalities
depending on whether they are required to relate facts, to provide information, to explain a
decision, to convince an audience or to promote a territory. Finally, the concomitant events
associated with their enunciation must not be neglected insofar as they are likely to influence
the individual and collective representations of the territorial actors.
Speeches and texts produced during the different phases of the HSR project will be subjected
to a first quantitative lexicometry analysis. Based on the occurrence of the terms used, the
frequency of co-occurrences, the relations established between the identified themes and
the connotations attached to them, the analysis allows to obtain a first classification of the
representation systems produced by high-speed rail. Then, the representations identified by
these statistical treatments will be the subject of a more in-depth qualitative analysis which
will be aimed at understanding the logics that have structured the representation systems,

International Congress on High-speed Rail: Technologies and Long Term Impacts - Ciudad Real (Spain) - 25th anniversary Madrid-Sevilla corridor 357