Nature´s special issue on science and cities

Nature has published a special issue with different articles and interactive data visualization tools covering the relationship between science and cities. Some items are worth reading:

• Cities: the urban equation, which serves as a summary and presentation of the articles from the special issue, defining the importance of location of scientific activities for urban economies.
• Looking at the best cities for science: includes a chart linking various cities with the number of scientific publications in the period 2000-2008. It highlights, among others, Beijing as a new center of scientific production.
• Paris plans science in the suburbs, on plans for construction in France of an important science campus in Paris (Paris-Saclay), as an example of how cities are addressing local development based on science and R&D activities.
• Cities: The century of the city which covers where the main urban centers of scientific production in different regions of the world are located, and on the other hand, the major challenges addressed by the scientific community regarding the problems caused by an increasingly urbanized world.
• Cities Building the best cities for science, an article that examines how urban environments create opportunities for scientific development, a key issue to understand the logic of global economic development.