Legitimate infrastructure projects in a context of crisis: Valencia’s high-speed rail underground station project as a symbol of the end of a dream
Résumé
Since the early 2000’s, Spain engaged a decade of great urban projects, which aim was to make up equipment lateness in Europe in the one hand, and to promote in a symbolical way Spanish metropolises with a modern and attractive image. This enthusiasm for planning and equipment of the territory is due to a political, economic and financial gearing, culminating colossal projects supposed to create positive dynamic in a national context of euphoria.
In a context of economic crisis, this period is over. The question of how to consider station projects and to adapt them to these new constraints is a major political preoccupation. The Mediterranean railway corridor as a European scale macro-project now appears as an opportunity to legitimate infrastructure investments, especially at an urban level.
In 2010, a new high-speed rail axis connected the city of Valencia to Madrid. The implementation of this new infrastructure together with the trans-European project of Mediterranean railway corridor reactivated Valencia Parque Central project. This excessive architectural and urban planning project, inscribed in a metropolitan vision, and its decline are a good example of a certain imaginary about high-speed (as well as about airports, museums…) as a factor of metropolitan visibility. The degree of symbolism, the link to modernity and to a certain image of infrastructure lead to different representations of the station as urban project, as high-speed praise, as architectural gesture… But these representations are now confronted to the reduction the end of a period of great projects.