TGV, développement local et taille des villes : Une analyse en termes d’innovation de services

The link between TGV service and local economic development is a very controversial subject. A lot of effects are quoted in the literature. But their birth is linked to a lot of different conditions. In this paper, we focus on the city size. Analyzing a TGV service in a territory as service innovations, we show that small and medium size cities are disadvantaged in terms of potential effects for two reasons. First, ameliorative innovations linked to TGV service in these cities are less important. Second, their characteristics are less favourable in terms of use potentialities of the TGV service. Our analysis is illustrated by the case of the small and medium cities in the Champagne-Ardenne region, which are served by East-European TGV since 2007.