GRAND FORMAT. Embarquez pour la Petite Ceinture de Paris

#ghost_town #rail #train #voie_ferrée
cc @albertocampiphoto

Cela me rappelle deux choses (plus liées aux #autoroutes qu’à la voie ferrée, mais ce sont aussi des manières de suivre par un reportage des voies de transport dans la périphérie de grandes villes) :
1. le #film « #Sacro_gra » (#Rome) : ▻http://www.sacrogra.it/film

http://www.sacrogra.it/img/film/film1.jpg http://www.sacrogra.it/img/film/film6.jpg

A nobleman from the Piemonte region and his daughter share a one-room efficiency in a modern apartment building along the GRA where they have been assigned temporary housing. In the cramped rooms, they pass the time with conversations that swing from the sophisticated to the banal.
A botanist like a Merlin armed with sound effects and an arsenal of poisons searches for a way to stop the plague of rapacious insects that is destroying an entire plantation of palms at a section where the GRA loses itself in wide grassy fields and flocks of sheep.
A modern-day prince who does gymnastics while smoking his cigar on the roof of his castle, which seems to have sprouted magically from among the faceless modern buildings that crowd an exit of the #GRA. He has transformed the castle into a bed&breakfast, a conventional center, movie sets, and on special Sundays a theater for ornately-designed fables for children and adults.
Like an astronaut on a first aid mission with his dayglo uniform and his glittering ambulance, a paramedic patrols the GRA, warming freezing bums who have fallen into drainage ditches, extracting young speed demons from cars crumpled around guard railings, resuscitating misunderstood heart attack victims, while in his off hours tending an old woman in his lonely house.
A seventh-generation eel fisherman, and one of the last, lives on the Tiber River in the shadow of a snarl of overpasses, dispensing to curious observers his wise and ancient philosophy of life as he maneuvers his boat and tends his nets exactly as his forefathers did.
Far from the iconic sites of Rome, the GRA is a repository of stories of those at the edges of the ever-expanding universe of the capital city.

2. Le #livre « #Tangenziali. Due viandanti ai bordi della città » (#Milan) :

https://p.gr-assets.com/200x200/scale/books/1401956732/22428036.jpg

Milano sta cambiando. Archiviata dolorosamente quella «da bere», del rampantismo anni Ottanta, la città si sta trasformando da capitale della moda e della finanza a moderna metropoli multietnica che ambisce a un ruolo sempre più centrale nella cultura europea e occidentale. Presa coscienza che esistono molti modi per conoscere una città, e molti modi per raccontarla, Gianni Biondillo e Michele Monina, il primo scrittore fortemente attaccato alla sua città, e il secondo, milanese d’adozione, da sempre appassionato di psicogeografia, decidono di mettere da parte lo spirito del flâneur e per una volta di intraprendere un viaggio programmatico da fare insieme: un giro intorno alla città dove l’uno è nato e l’altro è arrivato una decina d’anni fa e che ancora non sono riusciti a decodificare. Seguendo il margine della tangenziale di Milano, i due scrittori cercano di tracciare una mappa della città a partire dai suoi contorni. I viandanti della tangenziale mette in scena luoghi, personaggi, aneddoti, storie, traiettorie sghembe, percorsi d’acqua, cantieri in corso, polaroid di periferie, suggestioni psicogeografiche, appunti di fisiognomica cittadina, materiali vari raccolti durante i lunghi tragitti, fatti rigorosamente a piedi.

▻http://www.ibs.it/code/9788860884503/biondillo-gianni/tangenziali-due-viandanti.html

On remarque toujours, dans le travail sur les anciennes voies ferrées, que là où est passé le train, la nature repousse facilement, car il y a essentiellement des rails posées par-dessus un sol. Tandis que là où passe la voiture, c’est le béton, le goudron, etc, sur toute la surface et sur parfois pas mal d’épaisseur.
#résilience

C’est intéressant ce que tu notes @rastapopoulos, faut nuancer quand même par le fait que je crois que les friches SNCF sont considérées comme des terrains pollués au niveau du cadastre (à cause des fongicides utilisées dans les traverses de bois je crois, ou des insecticides balancées sur le ballast mais j’y crois moins). Je n’ose pas demander à maitre @simplicissimus de nous éclairer sur ce sujet :-)

Désormais quand on prend le train on se rend compte que les faisceau de voies de garage toujours en service (jusqu’à quand ?) ne sont quasiment plus désherbés, au grand damn des cheminots habitués à la méthode #napalm. Grenelle de l’environnement, économies budgétaires et interminable déclin du transport ferroviaire pourraient bien être la triple explication de ce phénomène... Si au moins ça pouvait avoir le mérite de faire revenir des insectes dans nos villes, why not ?

#transports #infrastructure #reconversion #friches #friches_industrielles

#By_the_Silent_Line: Beautiful Photos of a Parisian Railway Being Reclaimed by Nature

Photographer Pierre Folk has spent 3 years documenting the same, 20-mile long stretch of Parisian railway with his 4×5 view camera… but he’s not doing it because of the trains. No, in fact, no trains have run on this railway in for 80 years.

The photos are Folk’s way of examining the complex relationship between society and environment.

The railway in question is called La Petite Ceinture, or The Little Belt for us English speakers, and it has surrounded a piece of Paris since 1852. Unused since 1934, nature has come a long way in reclaiming this railroad, and its this reclamation that you see in Folk’s series By the Silent Line. But humanity is starting to push back.

▻http://petapixel.com/2014/09/05/silent-line-beautiful-photographs-vanishing-parisian-railway

Par sérendipité, je viens découvrir cet article. On y trouve d’autres jolies photos de la Petite ceinture, mais aussi comment accéder à la partie encore fermée au public.

A Walk along the Paris inner city Railway, abandoned since 1934
▻http://www.messynessychic.com/2013/06/17/a-walk-along-the-paris-inner-city-railway-abandoned-since-1934

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I spent my Saturday afternoon, avoiding the Parisian summer crowds and tiptoeing along the train tracks of the “Little Belt” railroad (La Petite Ceinture), a surviving relic of a bygone era, closed since 1934; open for pleasant summer strolls if you look hard enough for a way in…