An Empirical Analysis on the Possible Role of High-Speed Railway in Cultural Urban Development

Despite accessibility by rail is considered as one of the enabling factors of the creative economy, the impacts of High-speed rail (HSR) on cultural urban de-velopment are not much addressed by scientific literature. As a contribution to this research line, we want to examine whether and to what extent the availabil-ity of HSR affects the cultural offerings of cities and people's ability to partici-pate in cultural life. The Cultural and Creative Cities Monitor (CCCM) pro-posed by the EU is the starting point for our evaluations. We deepen the spatial accessibility impacts of HSR by developing an ad-hoc index that considers an isochrone calculation of travel time, frequency, and ratio of population served. In this way, we go beyond a qualitative assessment, extrapolating in quantitative terms the role of HSR over general rail accessibility. The indicator is tested on the 18 Italian cities included in the CCCM ranking, with a focus on Milan and Lombardy. Our results confirm some limits of the CCCM in capturing the im-pact of HSR and rail on urban accessibility and highlight the better potentialities of our method, when included in a more comprehensive evaluation framework