We had to stand all the way through the dreary northern suburbs and into the centre of Paris.

Mr. Tsiang's computer company, which is based in this dreary industrial suburb of Taipei, is moving much of its manufacturing to a factory near Shanghai.

Andy is the show's immoral compass in a movie milieu that has far more potential for satire than the small paper company in a dreary suburb of London that provided the setting for "The Office."

As the surplus population of Lyon was siphoned off to the new planets, empty shuns and dreary suburbs faded into meadows and forest reserves, dotted here and there with garden villages or efficient habitat complexes.

The outburst there by teen-agers shook the country and has caused a major rethinking of strategies to help the poor and immigrants, who are generally relegated to dreary suburbs, dominated by shoddy high-rise housing.

Arriving in Sweden, Lilya is asked to hand over her passport to the stranger who meets her and drives her to a dreary industrial suburb, where she finds herself locked in a high-rise apartment.

In the early 1970's, for instance, there were lots of people documenting the dreary suburbs: Robert Adams, Bill Owens and Lewis Baltz.

The much-vaunted panorama from the top of the clocktower revealed a ring of snow-capped peaks - the Kamniske Alps - but also a swathe of dreary suburbs straggling across the plain.

Back in November, it was the sons of North African immigrants in their dreary suburbs exploding in frustration at the lack of jobs, prospects or programs.

I'm sure next year's conference will be in cold, drab, Bradford, or smoggy Scranton, Ohio; or some dreary suburb outside Paris.....