The railway station areas of the 19th Century were a reflection of the Industrial revolution. Following a period of decay after the Second World War, the urban renewal of these areas is now one of the main concerns of local governments in European cities. In addition to a new railway station served by high speed trains, these urban projects are often based on functional diversity, including a business district.This thesis addresses the reversal of urban value in these specific urban areas, exploring how they have moved from repelling to attractive places. How do public and private actors interact, when the former cannot act alone in places constrained by physical barriers due to a lack of funding, and the latter are not inclined to invest in what they consider to be risky places?Our approach is both inductive and qualitative. The comparison of two projects in French and Belgian shrinking cities (Saint-Etienne, near Lyons, and Liège, near Brussels) allows us to understand what the levers for action are, and conversely what the bottlenecks are that slow down the implementation of the urban project around the station.As the result of our analysis, the railway station appears to be a positive and necessary factor for the reversal of urban value in these areas. It is a kind of insurance – in the same way as metropolitan areas create potentiality in the productive economy – both for public actors, as the railway station facilitates their mobilisation, and private ones, especially property developers, who are key elements in the relationship between public action and private investment. ; Construction socio-spatiale héritée du XIXe siècle ayant connu un déclin dans la seconde moitié du XXe siècle, les quartiers de gare centrale dans les villes occidentales sont un support récent et privilégié de l’action collective urbaine. Les projets urbains que ces gares cristallisent présentent des programmations récurrentes reposant sur la mixité fonctionnelle et une orientation tertiaire affirmée.Cette thèse interroge le ...