De l’aménagement du territoire au réaménagement des terrains de l’État : Politiques et projets de reconversion urbaine du domaine ferroviaire en France et en Italie

摘要

Barracks, ports, hospitals, prisons, railway sites are earmarked for many redevelopment projects in European cities. A substantial part of urban regeneration therefore occurs on ‘State places’. This research contributes to explain such an urban restructuring process that reshapes the material base of the State. It questions the reasons and the modalities of the reorganisation of a specific sector, railway firms, in urban areas. The comparative enquiry carried out two countries (Italy and France) and four cities (Milan, Bolzano Paris and Nantes) distinguishes two main factors. On the one hand, urban governments question the way the railway network has occupied central and pericentral urban areas since the 1970s, in relation to their increasing strategic power in urban development. On the other hand, real estate logics and skills have expanded within theses publicly owned firms since the beginning of the 1990s, due to their greater accounting autonomy and their need to face a rising financial pressure. Since then, the reorganisation of the logistical power (i.e. the capacity to order the flows of things and people) of this sector in cities is explained by the adjustment of three main ‘conceptions’ regarding the motives for the redevelopment of urban railway sites: real estate, urban planning, and industrial. This adjustment is carried out through urban redevelopment projects and follows different paths in Italy and France. In Italy, the loose institutional frame regarding railway land handover generates differentiated agreementsbetween operators and urban governments whereas in France processes and outcomes are more homogeneous from one city to another. The double shift from conventional approaches – toward the operator and the material base of the State – sheds light on new relationships between State and urban restructuring.