A high-density infrastructural project

Railway stations belong to the infrastructural sites that allowed the development of the “urbanistic novel” – a progressive and emancipatory epos. They were sites of emergence of a modern rhetoric that fostered a deep transformation of the land. Now that two major stations of the Léman area (Geneva and Lausanne) are living important mutations, the contemporary figures of this urban novel become the main concern. The article is based upon various sources (CFF, Service d’urbanisme de la Ville de Lausanne, neighbourhood associations) presenting the prospective transformations of the station of Lausanne and its immediate surroundings from these different perspectives. This publication presents the main issues of the project as of June 2012. It also deals with the system of actors implicated in its realisation, as well as discussing the future of the city.