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

Because it is difficult to separate the specific transport impact from other factors influencing economic and spatial development, the focus in research is increasingly on understanding the process by which territorial changes occur in order to explain how economic and social agents and local authorities have appropriated new transportation systems. This appropriation plays a crucial part in 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 identity process that must be explained to better understand the gradual and mutual adjustments between the transportation system and the territory. After specifying the issues involve in an analysis of the appropriation of high-speed rail, the article adopts an analytical framework inspired by Brunel and Roux‘s research work on consumer habits in order to explain how appropriation has gradually taken shape over the various stages of a high-speed line project.