Magazine N°150

PARIS TOMORROW, PARIS BEYOND ITS RING ROAD

Fluctuat Nec Mergitur.
Three standing words, a motto for Paris, a flag raised everywhere in response to the chilling events that plunged the old city on the banks of the Seine into mourning last year. Three tremendously affirmative words that alone say that they have seen many others, that they will no doubt see many more, and that they have no intention of allowing a poisonous climate to become permanent.

Paris is building, raising, erecting and living its life as a 21st century metropolis by reinventing its approach to the business world. Better still, it is opening its doors, leaping over its ring road and taking the pressure off the inner suburbs that it had previously looked down on, if not despised.

From Le Bourget to Villepinte, from Porte Maillot to Porte de Versailles, it has a total of 744,000 m2 of exhibition space, making it Europe's leading exhibition centre.

Further afield, in outlying housing estates that it had previously considered improbable, it has set up offices for Hermès and the Taddaeus Ropac contemporary art gallery in Pantin. The same is true of Montreuil, where BNP, Décathlon and Ubisoft have moved into green buildings and rehabilitated former factories. And it's the same in the Saint-Denis mixed development zone, where some big names like Generali, GDF Suez and Arcelor have set up shop... The examples are endless.

At the same time, modernity is being reinstated in these new towns, where there is little left of the tranquillity of the old Maurice Utrillo village squares. And yet, here and there, at the turn of a warehouse occupied by a start-up or a cultural centre, we come across a sudden liveliness reminiscent of the 19th arrondissement in Paris.
Even if the Paris metropolitan area is still a long way behind San Francisco in terms of new technologies and incubators created, it is now ahead of London and on a par with New York.

So, Paris asleep? Of course not!

Serge Barret, Editor-in-Chief
In this issue

Travel diary Philippe Labro: "Adventure with a capital A
NEWS aircraft, railways, hotels, meetings/businesses, cruises, throughout the world
TECHNOLOGIES Autonomous vehicles hit the road
NOMADE - Digital shopping
AIR - Technologies intuitive travel on the horizon
HOTELS - Meetings and heritage history revisited
BUSINESS DISTRICT Rotterdam, an archi-design home port
BUSINESS DESTINATION : PARIS
INCENTIVE :
Wide Angle : Japan, art of living, major art
Chronicle Seychelles: paradise has a country
Theme Burgundy: from one château to another
SURVEY - Congress A still buoyant sector
MANAGEMENT
Hotel reservations real solutions for real optimisation
Environment Increasingly shared responsibilities
Ancillary expenditureSmall extras and big stakes
DECIDEUR Jean-Marc Janaillac, Chairman and CEO of Air France-KLM