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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.

Within the current industrial context, companies aim to decrease the design process time and cost. The multidisciplinary design optimization (MDO) appears as a solution to accelerate the process and support designers in different stages of the design cycle. However, this relatively new concept needs to be integrated efficiently in the industrial environment and issues related to collaboration, data management, traceability and reuse need to be overcome.

The aim of this work is to efficiently integrate the MDO in the industrial design cycle by means of knowledge management (KM) techniques. To take into account the industrial environment, the methodology was applied in a collaborative software.

An example of collaborative design and optimization of an electronic throttle body (ETB) controller is presented with industrial requirements. The design problem was solved successfully and demonstrates the efficiency of the methodology in collaborative environments.

The contributions of this work lie in the structuration of the knowledge to support MDO and the definition of a general way to connect the existent MDO tools to the knowledge base. This methodology will enable to freely link different steps of the design process and reduce considerably the setting time of MDO in industries.

ABB’s commitment to adding value for customers includes a constant quest for innovation and improvement – new ideas, new thinking, new solutions and stronger customer relationships. FlexPlace is an example of that new thinking. Developed at ABB’s body‐in‐white facility in France, it is a software solution that will greatly improve efficiency and cost‐effectiveness in auto body assembly. Robots with FlexPlace use sensors and pattern recognition to automatically assemble the larger parts of a car, like the roof and the doors, with sub‐millimeter accuracy, and do away with the heavy and expensive tooling traditionally used.

Here are summaries of more papers given at the International Conference on Hot Dip Galvanising which met at Oxford in July under the auspices of the Zinc Development Association and which was attended by about 200 experts from Britain, the Continent, and America. The first report on the Conference appeared in our August issue.

The Essen Welding Fair reflected many new developments over a wide range of advanced manufacturing technology. John Mortimer reports.

The purpose of this paper is to seek to conribute to debates on disadvantage and social exclusion by examining the evolution of the concept of “periphery”, with specific reference to Paris.

The paper draws on research undertaken on the “suburbs” of Paris in order to highlight some of the socio‐spatial dimensions of social exclusion.

The notion of periphery has evolved from being a purely spatial concept, to a functional concept, and during the crises of the 1980s it became a key social concept in France.

Today, it is the absence of employment, or common values which characterises those who make up a social periphery. It is the unwaged, or the poor (in waged work or retirees), and immigrants, who live in the Parisian socio‐suburban periphery.