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This paper aims to describe an interdisciplinary and innovative research conducted in Switzerland, at the Geneva School of Business Administration HES-SO and supported by the State Archives of Neuchâtel (Office des archives de l'État de Neuchâtel, OAEN). The problem to be addressed is one of the most classical ones: how to extract and discriminate relevant data in a huge amount of diversified and complex data record formats and contents. The goal of this study is to provide a framework and a proof of concept for a software that helps taking defensible decisions on the retention and disposal of records and data proposed to the OAEN. For this purpose, the authors designed two axes: the archival axis, to propose archival metrics for the appraisal of structured and unstructured data, and the data mining axis to propose algorithmic methods as complementary or/and additional metrics for the appraisal process.

Based on two axes, this exploratory study designs and tests the feasibility of archival metrics that are paired to data mining metrics, to advance, as much as possible, the digital appraisal process in a systematic or even automatic way. Under Axis 1, the authors have initiated three steps: first, the design of a conceptual framework to records data appraisal with a detailed three-dimensional approach (trustworthiness, exploitability, representativeness). In addition, the authors defined the main principles and postulates to guide the operationalization of the conceptual dimensions. Second, the operationalization proposed metrics expressed in terms of variables supported by a quantitative method for their measurement and scoring. Third, the authors shared this conceptual framework proposing the dimensions and operationalized variables (metrics) with experienced professionals to validate them. The expert’s feedback finally gave the authors an idea on: the relevance and the feasibility of these metrics. Those two aspects may demonstrate the acceptability of such method in a real-life archival practice. In parallel, Axis 2 proposes functionalities to cover not only macro analysis for data but also the algorithmic methods to enable the computation of digital archival and data mining metrics. Based on that, three use cases were proposed to imagine plausible and illustrative scenarios for the application of such a solution.

The main results demonstrate the feasibility of measuring the value of data and records with a reproducible method. More specifically, for Axis 1, the authors applied the metrics in a flexible and modular way. The authors defined also the main principles needed to enable computational scoring method. The results obtained through the expert’s consultation on the relevance of 42 metrics indicate an acceptance rate above 80%. In addition, the results show that 60% of all metrics can be automated. Regarding Axis 2, 33 functionalities were developed and proposed under six main types: macro analysis, microanalysis, statistics, retrieval, administration and, finally, the decision modeling and machine learning. The relevance of metrics and functionalities is based on the theoretical validity and computational character of their method. These results are largely satisfactory and promising.

This study offers a valuable aid to improve the validity and performance of archival appraisal processes and decision-making. Transferability and applicability of these archival and data mining metrics could be considered for other types of data. An adaptation of this method and its metrics could be tested on research data, medical data or banking data.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the adaptation strategies of inhabitants and the forms of participation they adopt in tourism activities in Paris. As public policies have recently recognized the importance of taking into account inhabitants in the tourism development strategy in Paris and its suburbs, this paper proposes an analysis of the different forms of this participation and its stakes for the territories.

This paper gathers the first results of a thesis work in anthropology that is based on an ethnographic method combining participant observation, semi-directive interviews and bibliographic work. Observations took place in Paris and in several cities of the Grand Paris with inhabitants involved in tourism activities, or who are experiencing a difficult cohabitation with tourists in their neighborhoods. Thus, some 40 semi-directive interviews were conducted with inhabitants, members of associations and entrepreneurs. There were also participatory observation works within public institutions, mainly at the Paris City Hall, as well as interviews with dozens of tourism professionals from the private, public and associative sectors.

Not all residents have the same commitment to tourism and they do not all want to meet visitors. The relationship of inhabitants to tourism is complex and heterogenous. Nevertheless, this research shows that the roles played by inhabitants are multiple: producers of tourist services, ambassadors for their city or neighborhood, the permanent resident can also be seen as a product that attracts visitors, and as a tourist himself. The permanent resident offers the possibility of going off the beaten track, and promotes the revalorization of the identity of a territory and its inhabitants.

The originality of this research lies in the choice to focus primarily on the point of view of the visited population in a European capital. Ethnographic work allows for the observation and analysis of practices, in order to understand the stakes of visitor/visitor cohabitation and to anticipate possible movements of anti-tourist rejections.

Starting from the hypothesis of an ordinary/extraordinary tension that drives the link between tourist places and non-tourist places, this paper discusses the issue of tourist spatial delimitations. Rather than take such an issue for granted, the paper argues that the author needs to understand how the different actors within the tourism system create specific delimitations and how tourists deal with these delimitations. To pinpoint these tourist spatial delimitations, this paper considers three types of discourses: the discourse of local promoters, the discourse of guidebooks and the discourse of tourists. The purpose of this paper is to explain not only the tourist delimitations established by these actors but also the concordance between the guidebooks’ prescriptions, the public actors’ strategies and the tourists’ practices. In this empirical investigation, the author uses the case of Los Angeles and focuses more specifically on the two main tourist places within the agglomeration: Hollywood and Santa Monica. The argument supports the idea that political actors tend to develop what the author could consider a tourist secession, as the author tends to precisely delimit the designated area for the sake of efficiency. Guidebooks, which the author must consider because they are true and strong prescribers of tourist practices, draw their own tourist neighbourhoods. Finally, most tourists in Los Angeles conform to these delimitations and do not venture off the beaten track.

This paper examines three types of discourses: the discourse of local tourism promoters, the discourse of tourist guidebooks and the discourse of tourists. The purpose of the study is to explain not only the tourist delimitations established by these actors but also the concordance between the guidebooks’ prescriptions, the public actors’ strategies and the tourists’ practices. To conduct this analysis, this paper relied on an empirical survey (Lucas, 2014b) whose methodology used a range of different techniques. First, interviews with Convention and Visitors Bureau managers were performed to understand the delimitations established by the institutional actors directly in charge of the tourist development of those places. Second, the second kind of discourse considered here is that in guidebooks. Los Angeles is often included in guidebooks about California in general, albeit with a much shorter number of pages. Although all guidebooks were considered, the study mostly focused on those specifically dedicated to Los Angeles (Time Out, Rough Guide and Lonely Planet) to conduct a thick analysis of their discourses and to note the spatial delimitations that they established. The author must regard guidebooks as the prescribers of practices because they represent a source of information for tourists. The aim is to determine how tourists follow – or do not follow – the recommendations of guidebooks. Third, to understand these practices, the paper considers numerous interviews (approximately seventy) conducted with tourists.

Thus, in these two examples, the author has distinguished powerful delimitations of the tourist places created by promoters through their discourse, which provides information on how they promote the place through urban planning. This tourist staging, and all the specific processing of the place, contributes to a clear distinction between these places and the rest of the urban environment, allowing a very precise definition. The distinction is made from one street to another. However, these delimitations are mainly defined by the practices of the tourists: they have a very selective way of dealing with the public space of the two places concerned. They validate, update and thus make relevant the limits established by the institutional operators, sometimes performing even stricter operations of delimitation. This way of dealing with space is observed in the urban planning and in the discourses on the tourist places expressed in the guidebooks. There are no tactics to bypass, divert and subvert the spatial configuration settled by local authorities and guidebooks; tourists do not attempt to discover new places or to go off the beaten track (Maitland and Newman, 2009). Yet, this is not the only explanation for the way in which tourists occupy a place. Although the guidebooks perform the operations of delimitation and rank places (insisting on one place over another and highlighting what should be seen, where to go, etc.), they also exhaustively present the practices that one can perform, and how tourists deal with space either hints at their disregard of these tools or at individuals’ selection based on the information given. In Hollywood, as in Santa Monica, while the guidebooks exhaustively enumerate the numerous sites that might be interesting for tourist practices, the author observes a very important and discriminating concentration of these tourist practices within a precisely delimited perimeter, respectively, the Walk of Fame and the Ocean Front Walk: tourists walk from one street to another and from a full to an empty space. Thus, the author can support the idea that how tourists cope with space are temporary, delimited by highly targeted practices and restricted only to a few tourist places.

What about the ordinary/extraordinary dialectic? Most tourists do not look for something ordinary; yet, the entirety of what could be considered as “extraordinary” in one metropolis is not included in its tourism space. On the contrary, tourist places can also be seen as “ordinary.” Nevertheless, there is clearly a distinction observed through the discourses, but also in the practices, between an “inside” and an “outside” and between something extraordinary and one’s ordinary environment. One can interpret this result as an actual confirmation of the classic combination (tourist/sight/marker) that constitutes a “tourist attraction” (MacCannell, 1976, p. 44), which concerns a very specific way of dealing with space in Los Angeles. Tourists do not practice Los Angeles as the author might assume that they would typically practice other metropolises, e.g. strolling down the streets randomly. The two places examined in this paper are open to that kind of practice. One can consider that these places have a higher degree of urbanity than the average area of Los Angeles precisely because there are tourists. The density in terms of buildings is (relatively) more important and accompanied by a narrative construction of the urban space (the historic dimension of the buildings), and the public space has undergone specific urban planning and given special consideration, at least greater consideration than elsewhere. In these places, the author finds a concentration of population – the metropolitan crowd – that is otherwise very rare in Los Angeles. However, the tourists seem to have a limited interest in these attractions. These classic characteristics of urbanity do not seem to be regarded positively by a certain number of tourists and are not taken into consideration by tourists. This observation contrasts somewhat with the idea that dwelling touristically in a metropolis primarily entails the discovery of its urbanity (Equipe MIT, 2005). Discovering Los Angeles does not consist of experiencing the local society and of exploring the urban space but, rather, of performing specific practices in Los Angeles (seeing the Hollywood sign and the Stars and walking along the famous beaches). Two approaches can help us understand this gap: considering Los Angeles as a specific case or considering that the spatial configuration of Los Angeles enables us to bring out the logic at work in other metropolises but that would be too complex to distinguish here. Perhaps, the author finds both elements, and this reflection must invite the author to continue the discussion on the logic of tourists’ practice of metropolises: are they really looking for a maximal urbanity during their metropolitan experiences?

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the mechanisms involved in the progressive integration of marginal and peripheral urban areas, located close to established tourist destinations, into the visited tourism perimeter, and the interplay of the supporting public and private actors. It focusses on the intertwining processes of commercial gentrification, heritagization and aestheticization of former “ordinary” or marginal areas as tools for and indications of their tourism development. It explores how the metropolitan tourism geography is progressively redesigned.

Following a comprehensive literature analysis, the Saint-Ouen flea market was selected as the object of study. The methodology is based on extensive in situ observations, a systematic analysis of the press and a corpus of tourist guides and several in-depth interviews with local public and private stakeholders.

This paper shows that combined public (Parisian urban and tourism stakeholders) and private interests led to the integration in the tourism perimeter of a space that was once on the margins of the tourism and metropolitan area. It highlights the mechanisms of this integration and the link between touristification, gentrification, aestheticization and artification. It was found that private investors and political decision makers regard Saint-Ouen flea market as a major opportunity for tourism and real estate development, which leads to some contradictions regarding heritage protection. Finally, it shows that market traders opposed the evolution of a commercial place into a place of symbolic consumption. At another level, it shows the stakes of tourism diversification in a metropolitan tourism destination that is characterized by overtourism.

More studies are needed to identify not only the potential of flea markets to diversify tourist areas and practices, but also any potential resistance. The consequences on metropolitan tourism can be the subject of additional investigations: can this tourism diversification reduce overtourism in the centre, or is it only a diversification that functions as an additional driver of attractiveness? This research opens new perspectives on the modes of diversification (spatial and experiential) of metropolitan tourism as well as on the role that commercial changes play in these evolutions. It also makes it possible to question the modes of engagement of investors and traders in tourism.

This is an in-depth analysis of the case of Saint-Ouen flea market. The issues raised herein are applicable to similar peripheral urban areas, flea markets especially, that are rarely studied on the tourism-aestheticization-gentrification nexus. The analysis also shows the diversification of places and imaginaries of metropolitan tourism.