The World's Leading Science Cities
Science and technology are key drivers of economic growth. But where are the world's leading science cities? A new study published in Nature's Scientific Reports ranks the top cities for physics research around the world.
Much has been made of declining U.S. economic and technological dominance and "the rise of the rest" of the world. Their findings indicate that the U.S. has lost substantial ground as the global center for physics. In the 1960s, the U.S. accounted for 85.6 percent of physics papers tracked by the authors; in the past decade, U.S. output has declined to 36.7 percent.
"Physics knowledge was highly localized in a few cities in the eastern and western coasts of the USA and in a few areas of Great Britain and Northern Europe," they write. "In 2009 the picture is completely different with many producer cities in central and southern parts of the USA, Europe and Japan."
The big takeaway: While science is becoming more distributed globally, its production at the highest level remains incredibly concentrated and spiky. Indeed, the world's leading centers of physics have remained essentially the same for the past three decades. While Chinese cities have risen as consumers of scientific knowledge (alongside their economic growth), it remains to be seen if they can become leading producers of it.
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http://www.theatlanticcities.com/job...-physics/5403/