Félix Adisson – From spatial planning to the redevelopment of state-owned land: policies and projects for the urban regeneration of railway land in France and Italy

Barracks, ports, hospitals, prisons and railway sites are the focus of numerous regeneration projects in European cities. A substantial proportion of urban regeneration therefore takes place on ‘state-owned land’. This thesis helps to explain these urban restructuring processes, which also contribute to the reconfiguration of the state in its physical dimension. It examines the reasons behind and the ways in which the presence of a particular type of national operator – railway companies – is being reorganised within the urban environment. The comparative study, conducted across two countries (Italy and France) and four cities (Milan, Bolzano, Paris and Nantes), identifies two main explanatory factors. On the one hand, since the 1970s, city authorities have been challenging the ways in which the railway network occupies urban space, against the backdrop of their increasing involvement in urban planning. Furthermore, real estate strategies and expertise have been developing within public transport firms since the early 1990s, against a backdrop of greater financial autonomy and increased financial pressures. The reorganisation of this sector’s logistical capacity (the ability to organise the flow of goods and people) in cities can therefore be explained by the alignment of the three dominant ‘approaches’ to the reasons for the redevelopment of railway sites, namely: property, urban planning and industrial. This alignment takes place within development projects and is implemented differently in Italy and France. In Italy, the more flexible institutional framework governing the transfer of railway land gives rise to varied agreements between operators and local authorities depending on the city, in contrast to the French case, where processes and outcomes are more consistent from one city to another. Compared with existing approaches to the relationship between cities and the state, the dual shift proposed in this thesis – towards operators and towards the material dimension of the state – sheds light on new relationships between the reorganisation of the state and urban restructuring.