Territoire en Mouvement (Jan 2023)
L’urbanisme transitoire, outil de patrimonialisation et de mise en scène en amont du projet urbain ? L’exemple de SNCF Immobilier et de ses emprises ferroviaires à Paris
Abstract
Since 2015, the French National Railway Company (SNCF) has been developing temporary urban projects on some of its sites that are undergoing urban transformation, in a context of growing interest for the concept of “transient urbanism” among urban professionals in France. These temporary occupations, developed on sites destined to host an urban project in the near future, are a strategic challenge for SNCF Immobilier, the operator in charge of managing and developing the SNCF's vast real estate assets. The objective of this contribution is to demonstrate the role of temporary urbanism in the process of patrimonialization of SNCF’s land. While these sites are intrinsically linked to the history of the company and its workers, the railwaymen, temporary urbanism is becoming a tool for “SNCF Immobilier” to enhance the memory of these sites and to accompany their transformation within the railway group. More broadly, these temporary projects are accompanying an awareness within SNCF Immobilier of the heritage value of these railway sites, which until now have been little valued within group, influencing the shape of the final urban project. Temporary urbanism is mobilised more widely as a means of staging the transformation of the site and the future urban project, in a context of increasing use of storytelling in urban development. This article is the result of three and a half years of ethnographic research, carried out in immersion within SNCF Immobilier as part of a Cifre programme. The field of study is focused on the Ile-de-France region and focuses in particular on the Grand Train project, carried out in 2016 in the Chapelle railway depot, which constitutes the main theme of this demonstration. This methodological framework allows us to analyse, from behind the scenes of the SNCF, the use of temporary urbanism as an institutional tool for the enhancement of the identity, symbolism and memory of its railways, in support of strategic and operational issues.
