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LOGICS OF SPATIAL LOCATION
OF RESEARCH: REVIEW AND
PROSPECTS
MARION MAISONOBE, LABORATOIRE GÉOGRAPHIE-CITÉS
MARION.MAISONOBECNRS.FR
Winslow Homer, 1895, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
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AN « INNOVATIVE ACTIVITY »
▪ Innovative activities concentrates in large metropolitan areas because research productivity
is higher in large metropolitan areas (Bettencourt et al., 2007)
VERSUS
▪ The largest cities became larger because these cities were successful in adopting many
successive innovation (Evolutionary theory, Pumain et al., 2006)
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From Pumain et al., Cybergeo, 2006
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RELATION TO CITY SIZE
Innovation stage according to Pumain et al. 2006
From Pumain et al., Cybergeo, 2006
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Metropolitan advantages from Bettencourt et al., 2007
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MAPPING THE GEOGRAPHY OF RESEARCH
• R&D Employment
• Patent data
• Publication data
• Citation counts
Locales with at least one WoS publication between 2000 and 2013 (articles, reviews & letters)
Crédit: L. Jégou et M. Maisonobe
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APPROACH BY INSTITUTION: EXAMPLE OF UNIVERSITIES IN A LONG TERM PERSPECTIVE
William R. Shepherd: Historical Atlas, New York, Henry Holt and Company, 1923, in the Public Domain
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APPROACH BY INSTITUTION: EXAMPLE OF MARINE BIOLOGY STATIONS
Clerc-Rampal, G. (1913) Mer : la Mer Dans la Nature, la Mer et l'Homme, Paris: Librairie Larousse, p. 129
Photograph from the Freshwater and Marine Image Bank, University of Washington
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SPATIAL DECONCENTRATION OF SCIENTIFIC PRODUCTION
THE CASE OF FRANCE
From Grossetti et al., EPJ Web of Conferences, 2020
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Proximity between the geography of
universities and the geography of Research in
France
▪ «The distribution of researchers in higher education, because it is globally linked to that of students
(correlation coefficient of 0.995!), is increasingly modelled on the upper level of the French urban
structure. » (Brocard, 1991, p.73);
▪ During the 1990s, «higher education facilities tended to become as widespread as the facilities in
which compulsory education is completed » so that in the late 2000s, « all major complete higher
education hubs are less than two hours' drive from other centres in their region or neighbouring
regions» (Baron, 2010).
Madeleine Brocard. La science et les régions : géoscopie de la France. In: RECLUS-La
Documentation Française. 1991. ; Myriam Baron. Les transformations de la carte
universitaire depuis les années 1960 : constats et enjeux. In: Le Mouvement Social, vol.
233, no. 4, 2010. pp. 93-105
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Maisonobe, Marion.
«Regional Distribution of
Research: The Spatial
Polarization in Question». In
Handbook Bibliometrics, par
Rafael Ball, 377-96. De Gruyter
Saur, 2020.
https://doi.org/10.1515/97831
10646610-036
SPATIAL DECONCENTRATION OF
RESEARCH:
THE EUROPEAN SCALE FOR
DIFFERENT METRICS
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CHANGE IN THE GLOBAL CONCENTRATION OF
PRODUCTION BY CLASSES OF CITIES
Most publishing cities 2000* 2003* 2007* 2010* 2013* Trend
Top 10 17.1 15.8 14.7 14.0 14.1
Top 20 24.6 23.4 22.2 21.3 21.6
Top 30 30.2 29.0 27.5 26.6 27.1
Top 50 39.1 37.7 36.0 35.1 35.6
Top 100 52.8 51.3 49.8 48.7 49.2
Top 200 69.7 68.3 66.7 65.3 65.1
Top 500 89.6 88.4 86.7 85.0 84.4
Top 1000 96.7 96.3 95.5 94.6 94.2
Total 100 100 100 100 100
Share of the global total of publications (%)
Source: Science Citation Index Expanded (articles, reviews and letters)
*mobile average over three years
Results of the NETSCIENCE project, Labex SMS, Toulouse, 2016 – D. Eckert, M. Grossetti , L. Jégou, M. Maisonobe, B. Milard
See also: Les ancrages nationaux de la science mondiale: XVIIIe-XXIe siècle, Dir. M. Kleiche, 2018
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SCIENTIFIC PRODUCTIVITY AND CITY SIZE
THE METROPOLITAN ADVANTAGE: LEGEND OR REALITY?
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From Nomaler, Frenken & Heimericks, Plos ONE, 2014 – US data
What about productivity?
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Marion Maisonobe.
Géographie des activités
de recherche et
hiérarchies urbaines.
Centralités et hiérarchies
des réseaux et des
territoires. Forthcoming.
ISTE Editions.
Michel Grossetti, Marion
Maisonobe, Laurent
Jégou, Béatrice Milard,
Guillaume Cabanac.
Spatial organisation of
French research from the
scholarly publication
standpoint (1999-2017):
Long-standing dynamics
and policy-induced
disorder. EPJ Web of
Conferences, 2020.
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THE CRITICAL MASS EFFECT IN QUESTION
• Following the reports of University Alliance (2009 & 2011), we found no evidence of a size
effect regarding the spatial distribution of scientific activities between urban areas
(Grossetti et al., 2015, Handbook of geographies of innovation)
• The spatial distribution of academics explains the spatial distribution of scientific activity
(volume of publications per urban area) :
• In France with a very good R2 (95%) - Grossetti et al., 2020
• In the UK with a very good R2 (88%) - Maisonobe, forthcoming
→ Agglomeration perimeters shared in Maisonobe, Jégou & Eckert, 2018, Cybergeo
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P. A. Balland, C. Jara-
Figueroa, S. G. Petralia,
et al. Complex
economic activities
concentrate in large
cities. In: Nat Hum
Behav, 4, 2020. pp.
248–254
Does complexity concentrate in metropolitan areas?
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DISCUSSION
• Influence of urban perimeters (Arcaute et al., 2015)
• Regression method (OLS) (Leitão et al., 2016) + zero values (Finance & Cottineau, 2019)
• Residuals (low R2)
• Other determinants than the city size (spatial logics by institution)
• Other ways of measuring a spatial concentration and its evolution
• Promising method: a dominance tree approach to systems of cities (Louail & Barthelemy,
2022)
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POLICY IMPLICATIONS
• Policy makers firmly believe in agglomeration effects favouring the metropolitan areas:
« As the share of highly educated people tends to be larger in bigger cities, the productivity
effects of city size and human capitals can thus reinforce each other » OECD, The Metropolitan
Century, 2015, https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264228733-en
• Demonstrating the lack of critical mass effects has important consequences as it invalidates
the benefit of concentration of research funds and excellence policies targeting the biggest
cities
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The World is spiky
Florida, 2005
« The concentration of creative talents in a few hotspots able to
connect to the global system of cities is intensifying from the
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Maisonobe, M., Jégou, L., & Cabanac, G., Peripheral Forces, Nature Index 563, S18-S19 (2018)
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07210-6
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Taken from
Maisonobe, 2021
Handbook
Bibliometrics
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The GeoScimo website in french and english
GEOgraphie de la production SCIentifique MOndiale
URL : https://www.irit.fr/netscity
An online tool (beta version) to
analyse and map contemporary
scientific networks at the city level