Symbols and legacies of a prestigious past, railway stations and their neighbourhoods are now the focus of strategies for adapting to global change. The book explores the various technical processes involved in this approach (reuse of building materials for renovation, environmental and landscape integration, energy transformations, etc.) and shows how these processes link railway regeneration to territorial development. The twenty-one experts assembled in this book deploy critical approaches and international perspectives to think of railway stations as transdisciplinary border objects where naturalistic, architectural and political perspectives can be articulated. As such, the book will enlighten users, as well as residents and citizens, on the processes of socio-technical transitions underway, as much as it will help them question the costs, effects and ends of the eco-modernization of our public goods and services.

At the main point of intersection between the railway and the city, stations are key elements in the organization of the intermodal transport as well as catalysts of urban developments in metropolises, medium and small cities. The focus of this publication is to explore the enrichment of a renewed approach of railway stations as intermodal nodes, therefore acting as breeding grounds for both urban and social developments.
This book has been initiated and built upon several activities currently running at the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions (AMS Institute), Delft University of Technology (DIMI, Delft Deltas Infrastructure Mobility Initiative and Department of Architecture of the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment) and University of Paris-Est (l’École d’Urbanisme de Paris). These activities have been framed within the context of two rapidly developing metropolitan areas: Randstad in the Netherlands and Métropole du Grand Paris in the Ile de France. This volume forms the basis for a research on the ‘role of stations in future metropolitan areas’ with the ambition to link the two countries, learning from their different cities and distinct geographical context through comparable mobility challenges on the levels of the inner city, suburban and peripheral areas.