Le rôle des expériences et méthodes étrangères dans la fabrication d’une expertise locale des transports collectifs urbains

Abstract

The paper deals with the studies carried out between 1963 and 1971 concerning Lyon’s subway. Its purpose is to understand how foreign experience and cognitive tools contributed to the creation and legitimization of local expertise in public transport in a context characterised by the rapid development of the motorcar. We demonstrate that foreign experience and cognitive tools acted as a restraint (for example methodological standards) on the studies of the local teams. But they were also at the same time a resource to legitimate a still fragile expertise and the subway project. This observation invites us to pay more attention to knowledge developed at a local level in a period where it is usually assumed that the central administration monopolized legitimate cognitive resources.

Keywords

• government sciences
• journeys
• public transportation
• subway