Can A City Be Designed for Scientific Innovation?

A new study looks at the best cities in the world for science, using publication rates in as the basis. The researchers

1 minute read

October 23, 2010, 1:00 PM PDT

By Tim Halbur


Christian Matthiessen, a geographer at the University of Copenhagen, noticed that metropolitan areas were behind the majority of scientific research and publications, so he got interested in looking at how cities encouraged scientific innovation:

From Nature: "By Matthiessen's count, the top 75 science-producing clusters in the world from 2006 to 2008 generated some 57% of the research - 3.9 million papers. Many argue that a fine-grained analysis might help to identify the factors that drive successful research clusters - indicating rising stars and aiding city planners and policy-makers in building profitable centres elsewhere."

Tokyo, London, Beijing and the San Francisco Bay Area top the list.

Friday, October 22, 2010 in Nature

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