The revitalisation of railway station areas has been a hot issue in
policy making in Europe in recent years. The introduction of two new
railway systems - the high speed train and light rail systems - has
pushed forward the redevelopment of not only railway stations
themselves, but also of their - in many cases deteriorated - direct
surroundings. Examples of revitali- tion of railway station areas can be
found throughout Europe, for example in countries like England
(Liverpool), France (Euralille), Germany (Berlin) and the Netherlands
(Amsterdam South Axis). The dynamics of revitali- tion of railway
station areas can best be understood by combining the - sights of
several disciplines; economics, and spatial sciences being the most
important disciplines. This book therefore addresses the subject from a
multi-disciplinary perspective. Railway station area redevelopment
projects try to cope with the - creased lack of interoperability and
interconnectivity between infrastr- tures and boost the local/regional
economy by creating a new high quality multifunctional urban landscape
at the same time. At present, the initial outcomes with the
transformation of deteriorated railway station areas into modern mixed
office, shopping and residential areas stems hopeful, but what are the
prospects of those redeveloped areas? Most of the papers contained in
this volume were presented at the s- th cial session "Railway stations
and urban dynamics" of the 45 conference of the European Regional
Science Association (ERSA) held in Amst- dam, the Netherlands during
August 2005.
