Francia: grandi progetti infrastrutturali alla ricerca di legittimità

France: major infrastructure projects seeking legitimation - The conflicts connected with the implementation of transport infrastructures which have characterised major projects in France can be attributed both to the structural evolution of society with the rise of ‘post-materialist’ values and the gap between procedures for managing major projects by the Administration de l’Equipement and the aspirations of society in the 1980s and 1990s. The disputes in France regarded firstly the procedures with which the Administration de l’Equipement supervised the planning and implementation of major public works and secondly the legislative framework. The legislative reforms which commenced in the 1990s innovated the procedures for organizing and promoting transparent and democratic public debate around the implementation of public works. The paper not only highlights the innovative aspects, but also the elements in the procedural innovations introduced that have not been completely solved, attributable to the high degree to which the cases have been institutionalised, which has not prevented ‘public disputes’ which continue as a form of unorganised dispute, outside any administrative framework, which can be explained with the crisis of the legitimacy of public action on infrastructure projects.

Véronique Catherin-Gamon, Francia: grandi progetti infrastrutturali alla ricerca di legittimità in "TERRITORIO" 46/2008, pp 16-20, DOI: