Revue belge de géographie
| 2016High-speed rail and the city: urban dynamics and tourism City planning related to the completion of the new high speed line in Rennes, BrittanyThe unexpected competition between central projects and peripheral private investments
L'urbanisme lié à l'arrivée de la Ligne à Grande Vitesse à Rennes (Bretagne). La concurrence inattendue entre projets publics en centre-ville et opérations privées en périphérieRomaric Nègre and Guy Baudelle This text was automatically generated on 4 novembre 2016.Belgeo est mis à disposition selon les termes de la licence Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International.City planning related to the completion of the new high speed line in Rennes, BrittanyThe unexpected competition between central projects and peripheral private investments
L'urbanisme lié à l'arrivée de la Ligne à Grande Vitesse à Rennes (Bretagne). La concurrence inattendue entre projets publics en centre-ville et opérations privées en périphérieRomaric Nègre and Guy Baudelle Introduction 1 With a provision scheduled for summer 2017, the Bretagne-Pays de la Loire high-speed line (BPL HSL) between the cities of Le Mans and Rennes will extend the Atlantic HSL commissioned in 1989 from Paris to Le Mans (Figure 1). The new infrastructure will set Rennes, the administrative capital-city of Brittany, less than one hour and half away from Paris compared to the current two hours and ten minutes. If time savings will be significant, a sharp breakdown threshold in the global mobility scheme seems unlikely to occur given the current high level services frequency (AUDIAR, 2014). Considering, however, that any HSL is likely to induce "dynamics of amplification and acceleration in pre-existing trends" but rarely to cause a trend reversal (Offner, 1993), it is necessary to consider the socio-economic path of Rennes and the territorial integration process of the infrastructure reflected by local actors.
3However an extensive literature about the possible effects of HSL on urban growth and especially on the direct and indirect impacts of newly connected (central or peripheral) railway stations on the local real estate office market calls for caution. The state of the art reveals the absence of certainty as to the reality and extent of the possible effects of a HSL (Jensen-Butler & Madsen, 2005;Bruinsma et al., 2008; Ureña, Ménerault & Garmendia, 2009;Mignerey, 2012; Baudelle, 2016), including the so-called "structuring effects" (Offner, 2009(Offner, & 2014. The very first HSLs have raised the same hopes and concerns (Offner, 1993) while the HSRs under construction abroad give rise to contradictory scientific expectations considering these uncertainties (Kantor, 2008; Randolf, 2008; Todorovitch, 2011;Lee, 2007). The misfortunes of high-speed rail in Spain have led to many contradictory tests to estimate its impact (Esteban 1998;Gutierrez Puebla, 2004; Bellet et al, 2010;Terrin, 2011;Garmendia et al, 2012;Facchinetti-Mannone et al., 2013; Richer, 2014). The recurrent nature of such research only demon...