Scienceville

In both fiction and reality, certain places become well-known for being used for specific purposes: towns can produce specific industrial or agricultural products, while city districts may be devoted entirely to finance, industry, even theatre.

So what happens when a town, a neighbourhood — or even an entire city — becomes famous for scientists?

A variant on the Planet of Hats, this region is known for its intellectual achievers: they can be purely theoretical, mechanical, philosophical, or even magical in nature (if Sufficiently Analyzed Magic is in play). Note that the population of the area doesn't need to be composed entirely of scientists or engineers: all that matters is that the community is known for its thinkers.

Occasionally, this trope may overlap with universities and research facilities, but only if they're large enough to function as districts or towns in their own rights.

May or may not be the territory of a Proud Scholar Race, especially if it's a country or a planet. May also be a City of Adventure, depending on what kind of "science" is going on.

Compare and contrast Mad Scientist Laboratory. If the science facility and its supporting industries are the main employer, Scienceville is also a Company Town.

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Examples

Comic Books

• The DCU: Oolong Island, the site of many a Mad Scientist's island base, eventually became its own sovereign nation led President Veronica Cale, and still a haven for mad scientists. It also became headquarters for the Doom Patrol.
• Top 10: The city of Neopolis was originally founded as a home for all the science heroes left over from World War II. To this day, radical scientific research is a major attraction of the city.

Literature

• 1632: Grantville becomes one despite previously being mostly a working-class Dying Town in late 20th century America, due to the fact that its public library was brought back along with them to early 17th century Europe. Although very few of Grantville's residents previously made their living off of advanced degrees before whatever happened that sent the whole town back, many are good at improvising with available resources and still consider education important, especially after realizing that their library and the knowledge within has become the single most valuable resource they have to survive in their new situation and quest to bring forward the Enlightenment and beyond decades and centuries ahead of schedule. Even after the capital of their new United States of Europe is moved away from Grantville in later books because the local geography is too difficult to expand the town enough to hold such a large and complex governing system, it remains an important center for learning.
• Discworld: Parodied.
  • The city of Ankh-Morpork has the Street of Alchemists, so named for being the site of the frequently rebuilt Alchemists' Guild headquarters. Outside of Unseen University, this is the district best known for professional thinkers and tinkerers; unfortunately, given the alchemists dabble in extremely volatile subjects with only a modicum of caution, the guild hall is periodically blown sky high by experiments gone wrong, and exists in a state of perpetual repair.
  • The Unseen University itself almost qualifies, having a permanent population of at least a couple of hundred fully qualified wizards plus thousands of students and support staff with sufficient amenities that they can and quite often do go weeks without ever having to venture past the main gates.
  • The city of Ephebe is one massive case of this: a parody of classical Athens, it's home to philosophers of all kinds, many of whom can be found in the process of arguing, experimenting, and leaping naked out of the bath in the wake of their latest discovery. It was also home to the second-largest library in the world before the Omnians burnt it to the ground in Small Gods. Thankfully, the Unseen University's librarian was able to rescue several priceless volumes.
• Foundation Series: The titular organization started as a group of scholars who were to prepare the Encyclopedia Galactica. While they eventually became the core of a massive state spanning a third of the galaxy (and meant to eventually control the whole of it), the planet always relied on its technological superiority and had a considerable percentage of top-level scientists.
• Gulliver's Travels: Parodied and played for laughs. Laputa is a satire of Britain's Royal Society — a Floating Continent dominated by wildly eccentric, hopelessly impractical scientists. As a whole, their inventions are almost invariably useless, pointless, or just plain nonsensical. Their one big success lies in the artificial magnetism their city uses to fly, which allows them to dominate the land below: if anyone rebels, they can either hover in place above them and blot out the sun, drop boulders from on high, or — in extreme cases — land Laputa right on top of them. In keeping with the Awesome, but Impractical nature of the place, this doesn't always work out for them.
• Perdido Street Station: Brock Marsh is widely known as New Crobuzon's "science district". Although it features the same pubs, pollution and urban decay as the rest of the city, it's become famous as a residence and workplace for some of the brightest minds outside the University of New Crobuzon, to the point that the local water is so tainted with magical runoff that mudlarks scavenging on the riverbanks have been known to randomly vanish into nothingness. Renegade scientist Isaac der Grimnebulin works here, along with his friends Lublumai and David.
• A Song of Ice and Fire: The Citadel, and by extension, the city of Oldtown itself. The headquarters of the Order of Maesters, it's a massive complex spanning several buildings, several of which are technically islands in the middle of the river — arguably enough to qualify as a small town in its own right. As the seat of the leading Archmaesters, the site of the Order's library, and a school for Maesters in training, it's the greatest centre of learning and study in all of Westeros. No other complex like it exists in the country, making the kings and lords of the land dependent on Oldtown if they want to acquire the services of a Maester — be they healing, accountancy, ravenry, or poison.
• The Tough Guide to Fantasyland: The City of Wizards is a coalition of Good wizards gathering to live, study and debate together (Evil ones are too antisocial to get along for any length of time). It is usually a decent place to visit — give or take a bit of magical weirdness involving perspective and distances. The inhabitants can be characterized as aloof All-Powerful Bystander-types, quarrelsome human wizards, or collegiate wizards who never agree on anything.

Live-Action TV

• Eureka: The premise concerns a remote Oregonian town of the same name, established in the 1950s as a haven for America's most brilliant scientists. For good measure, it's kept camouflaged by an electromagnetic shield, ensuring that the geniuses at work will not be disturbed.
• The Expanse: When it was still a colony of Earth, a disproportionate number of scientists were sent to Mars to expedite the terraforming efforts in an attempt to alleviate Earth's Overpopulation Crisis. When Mars seceded, those scientists paused the terraforming efforts and dedicated themselves to military applications, quickly building a fleet that is technologically advanced enough to go toe-to-toe with the UNN's own fleet despite Earth's massive advantage in manpower and resources.
• Star Trek: The planet Vulcan is a planetary Scienceville, home to a Proud Scholar Race known for its scientists and philosophers. Vulcans who serve in Starfleet disproportionally become science officers compared to other disciplines.

Tabletop Games

• Mage: The Ascension: Both the Traditions and Conventions have various bases across reality in which they can study magic — or Enlightened Science, as the case may be. However, the biggest, most populous and most famous of them is the Copernicus Research Centre, the Void Engineers' headquarters in the Deep Universe. Affectionately known as the Cop, it's a Dyson Sphere as big as the space between the Earth and the Sun. As such, it functions as a training ground, a laboratory, and a home away from home for a huge number of Void Engineers.
• Space 1889: Port Progress is a city founded by Thomas Edison to be a haven for scientists and inventors.
• Tales from the Loop has two standard settings; Boulder City, Nevada, and the Stockholm exurb of Svartsjölandet, both of which are dominated by their respective Loops, huge particle accelerators that have led the cutting-edge of STEM research pretty much since WWII.
• Warhammer:
  • Altdorf is not only the capitol of the Empire, but also known as one of the biggest centres of learning and research in the Old World. It is home to both the University of Altdorf — a location big enough to occupy an entire district of the city — and to the Imperial Engineers School, which produces some of the greatest technological innovations of the Empire. Additionally, the Colleges of Magic are also based here, making it the de facto centre of all magical study in the Old World.
  • Nuln, like Altdorf, also has this reputation; however, while the capital is a cosmopolitan center for all kinds of knowledge, Nuln is viewed exclusively as an engineer's city. Along with being a hub of heavy industry and defended with numerous ingenious mechanisms, it's home to the famous Imperial Gunnery School, where artillery specialists, demolition experts and other technical specialists learn the fine art of blowing stuff up.
• Warhammer 40,000:
  • The planet Prospero was originally one of these, having been chosen as a sanctuary for a reclusive cabal of psykers during the Dark Age of Technology. Here, the scholars of the colony could study and improve their powers without fear of being persecuted. Contact with Magnus the Red and the Imperium transformed it into a major centre of learning and knowledge, and for a time, it flourished... right up until the Space Wolves bombed it into dust.
  • Mars is the home of the Adeptus Mechanicus, who have total control over the planet and their own military, the Skitarii, to guard it. Most of the Imperium's technology is developed and researched on Mars, with projects taking years or even centuries of testing before being approved for mass production.

Theme Parks

• Disney Theme Parks: The original iteration of Tomorrowland was framed as a hyper-advanced city with many research labs and engineering facilities constantly pushing the limits of human achievement.

Toys

• BIONICLE: The city of Ga-Metru is Metru Nui's spiritual and schooling center, containing schools, universities, and research facilities.

Video Games

• 7th Dragon: The city of Preloma, which has the nickname "Scholar City" as its subtitle, is a remarkably advanced city whose technology is far ahead of any other in the world. It later makes an appearance in 7th Dragon III Code: VFD.
• Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain: The city of Stahlberg was reportedly one of the greatest centres of learning in all of Nosgoth, housing some of the most prestigious universities and libraries known to humankind. Unfortunately, the armies of the Nemesis destroyed the place long before Kain arrives. Kain eventually travels back in time and assassinates William the Just before he becomes the Nemesis, resulting in Stahlberg being restored to its former glory... although there do seem to be a lot of vampire hunters around all of a sudden.
• Civilization:
  • In early games, a popular strategy is to build a single "Super Science City" focused on producing research by concentrating the science-multiplier Wonders in one location.
  • In Civilization VI, cities can build a Campus district to boost scientific progress, housing such buildings as the Library, University, and Research Lab. There are also a few ways to make your Campuses even more effective, such as appointing a Researcher governor to that city, building scientifically themed World Wonders (such as Oxford University, the Great Library, or the Amundsen-Scott Research Station), or getting adjacency bonuses from nearby terrain or from Natural Wonders. Depending how you build, it is entirely possible to have one or two cities be much sciencier than the rest of your civilization.
• Fallout:
  • Fallout: New Vegas: In the DLC pack Old World Blues, Big Mountain Research and Development Center is essentially a city-sized laboratory complex where some of the most advanced technologies of the pre-War era were developed. Effectively a world in its own right, the "Big Empty" is equipped with numerous ancillary research bases, a prison camp for test subjects, and even a private village for the scientists in residence — plus an advanced HQ building just for you. It's currently home to the Think Tank, the preserved brains of the executive scientists who ran the complex, all of whom are still continuing with their increasingly demented research; if you go out your way to look, it can also become home to numerous artificial intelligences with many useful scientific skills. With your help, the Big Empty can be put to good use, with the Think Tank and the AIs aiding humanity's recovery in the future.
  • Fallout 4 has the Institute. As the name implies, it started out as a pre-War educational institution (the Fallout-verse's version of M.I.T), but then they went literally underground and continued their R&D as the world descended into post-apocalyptic chaos.
• Final Fantasy IX:
  • The city of Lindblum is world-famous for its technological innovations and awe-inspiring airship fleet, having flourished under the reign of Regent Cid; consequently, the city's Industrial District is a hub of activity for engineers and inventors eager to produce the next big development in airship design. Most of them actually live here, too. The entire district is destroyed when Queen Brahne attacks Lindblum, forcing the surviving engineers to move to the Business District in order to help with the reconstruction efforts later in the game. On the upside, many of them end up being hired by Regent Cid to help create the Hilda Garde III when he finally regains his inventive tendencies.
  • Daguerro is an ancient Great Big Library of Everything hidden away on an island south of the Forgotten Continent. Because of its vast archives and strange water-powered machines, it's attracted a huge number of scholars, engineers, artisans and other seekers of knowledge... and because there's no towns in the vicinity, Daguerro has also become a permanent residence for several of the researchers studying the place.
• The Journeyman Project gives us the World Science Center as one of the time periods. The goal in this mission is to stop one of Elliot Sinclair's robots from killing Dr. Enrique Castillo.
• The Legend of Dragoon: The ancient Wingly city of Aglis was devoted entirely to the study of magic, and even after being shot out of the sky and sunk to the bottom of the ocean during the Dragon Campaign over eleven millennia ago, the place is still humming. Savan, the last of the Wingly researchers left in the city, is still studying magic here in the company of his creations by the start of the game.
• The New Order: Last Days of Europe: Tomsk is widely known as an idealistic democracy ruled by a clique of scientists and scholars. This is especially true if the Modernists take over, in which case Andrey Sakharov will pursue a campaign of scientific development and greatly advance the local standard of living.
• Overwatch: The city of Oasis was founded in a future Iraq by scientists who felt that modern advancement was moving too slowly. To that end, and to demonstrate the inherent power of science, they deliberately chose the most desolate area of Iraq to build upon, as proof that genius could turn a desolate region into a sprawling technological metropolis. The city is luxurious and safe, with crime basically unheard of thanks to advanced crime-predicting algorithm and automated police. It holds a library with every single printed material on a database, as well as extensive resorts, luxury suites and one of the greatest universities in the world. The city's crowning achievement is a large tower in perpetual construction — it already ranks as the world's tallest building, but the goal is to continue building upon the tower indefinitely for as long as possible.
• Stellaris allows you to specify a planet as being a "Tech World" — labs are cheaper to build and Pops working science jobs require less upkeep. Some planets take this further by having various modifiers that increase certain scientific outputs (Physics, Society or Engineering). A Science Ship can also be parked in orbit to assist in research, further boosting research speed.
• Sunless Skies: The Royal Society is essentially a university campus that counts as an entire port in its own right. Hidden away in a desolate corner of Albion, it's a village of beautiful marble buildings and lush, verdant gardens where the Royal Society continue bleeding-edge research and invention — sometimes aided by you, naturally.
• Tails Noir: Science City is Hotel Vancouver turned into an institution with luxurious living quarters for the scientists and their families. It's mentioned that the living quarters are used as a testbed for experimental technologies.
• Tales of Vesperia has the underground city of Aspio, also known as the City of Scholars, where mages like Rita Mordio dedicate their lives to researching the Blastia left behind by the Geraios Civilization. Since Blastia research is so vital, the Empire has restricted access of the city to casual travellers outside of mages living there and the Imperial Knights, forcing Yuri, Repede, Estelle and Karol to sneak inside via the back door into the library the first time around. Near the end of the game, Aspio is destroyed when the ancient weapon of Tarqaron, which rests beneath the city, is uplifted by Duke Pantarei.
• Trails Series:
  • The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel: The city of Roer in Erebonia is devoted entirely to the development of orbal technology. Being run by the prestigious Reinford Group (Alisa's family), it houses the famous Roer Institute of Technology where scientists and engineers graduate from, and many technological displays such as the escalator are more prominent here than in any other location in the country. It's also the birthplace of the Courageous.
  • The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky: Liberl has its own equivalent in the city of Zeiss, home to the Zeiss Central Factory. ZCF is a world leader in the development of orbal technology, especially in developing orbal engines for airships. The factory chief of ZCF is also the mayor of the city.
• World of Warcraft: Dalaran is the place to go for researchers of Sufficiently Analyzed Magic. Gnomeregan is a more technological example, as the gnomes are among the main producers of the setting's Schizo Tech, along with the goblins.

Web Originals

• Girl Genius: Europe is ruled by Mad Scientists or "Sparks", but most cities or towns have just one family of Sparks, since they're somewhat territorial. Paris is an exception, due to the Master's ruthless enforcement of neutrality, and many houses send their scions there for their education.
• Neopets: The Kingdom of Brightvale is characterized as a kingdom of peaceful scholars whose king is obsessed with studying and likes to give out or receive bits of philosophy and wisdom. They practice magic, their local wheel is known as the "Wheel of Knowledge", and they're contrasted with the next-door kingdom of Meridell, which is more like The Dung Ages and doesn't care much for intellectual pursuits.

Western Animation

• Futurama: In "The Duh-Vinci Code", it's revealed that Leonardo da Vinci is actually an alien from the planet Vinci, which is described as one colossal university and resembles Renaissance-era Italy. He left the planet because, by his people's standards, he's actually the dumbest of them all.
• Transformers: Rescue Bots takes place on Griffin Rock, an island filled with inventors who are constantly trying out their creations.

Real Life

• For a time, Alexandria in Egypt was known as such a place, in part due to its well-known Great Library. Unfortunately, when the anti-intellectual pharaoh Ptolemy VIII began purging the intellectuals from the city, the reputation began to fade, and by the time of the library's final destruction over 200 years later, that reputation was gone completely.
• The Baghdad House of Wisdom may or may not have been a literal building in said city for the Mongols sacked it so thoroughly in 1258 that it was claimed the Tigris River ran black with all the ink from the manuscripts they dumped into there and that the tossed books piled high enough for someone to ride across the river on a horse^note it's likely these are exaggerations as they were written many years after the actual sacking, but what is certain is that for several centuries the Umayyad and later the Abbasid dynasties that presided over the Islamic Golden Age collected and translated into Arabic as many works of writing from the many locations they had conquered as they could, becoming a renowned center of learning of fields from mathematics to astronomy to law to literature, as well as preserving the writings of philosophers from Ancient Greece and Persia. Beyond Baghdad's sacking, the idea of a center for learning had been copied by leading families in other cities across the Islamic world such as in Cairo, Fes, and Cordoba.
• Timbuktu used its status as a wealthy Merchant City to also become a Scienceville renowned for its three leading centers of learning in the Sankore, Djinguereber, and Sidi Yahya Mosques which became collectively known as the University of Timbuktu, spurred on by Mansa Musa's pilgrimage to Mecca in the early 14th century with almost-unimaginable amounts of gold and returning to Mali with, among others, many scholars and books. In contrast to other Houses of Wisdom in the Islamic world at the time where the libraries were chiefly sponsored by rich local families, the whole community of Timbuktu was more actively involved in the running of the University — with an estimated 1/4 of the city's population being students at its height it would have been very difficult to not run into someone who wasn't involved in studies. Timbuktu declined as a trading center with the opening of the ocean-going trade routes in the 16th and 17th centuries and was subsequently attacked, but the populace took it upon themselves to hide the manuscripts in basements and cellars to keep them safe whether from Moroccans in the 17th century or the French in the 19th and early 20th; there is now an effort underway to recover the manuscripts from their hiding spots so that they can be properly preserved and learned from.
• The Naukograds of Russia. Quite apart from the fact that the name literally means "Science City," the seventy Naukograds in existence are officially recognized as valuable source of scientific research; some of them even receive special privileges from the Russian government as a result. Ten of them are also closed cities, used specifically for nuclear research by the Russian military.
• Also from Russia, the sharashki: essentially gulags built specifically to imprison scientists, engineers and other skilled individuals who might be of some specific use to the state, the inmates were put to work on research projects that could directly benefit the Soviet government. Sharashki were positively luxurious by gulag standards, with inmates being allowed special food rations, relaxed security, comfortable accommodations, visits by relatives, and even access to foreign publications; on the downside, credit for their hard work would invariably be given to scientists known to be in full support of the government.
• Given the extreme conditions in play, the only long-term inhabitants of Antarctica are scientists working in research bases dotted across the wilderness, studying the polar environment, astronomy, and other disciplines. Over time, this has become well-known enough to give rise to the Eerie Arctic Research Station trope.
• Silicon Valley, California is considered a global center for high-tech industries, innovation, venture capital and social media, and was originally named for the large number of innovators and manufacturers in the region specializing in silicon-based MOS transistors and integrated circuit chips.
• The Manhattan Project to develop the United States' nuclear arsenal required enormous manpower, as it was both a scientific research mission and industrial project to produce nuclear materials. The facilities had to be built quickly, in areas isolated enough that they could be easily guarded (and to minimize damage in case of accidents), but still close to railroad lines and sources of water. To that end, Clinton Engineer Works (now Y-12 National Security Complex and Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee) was built to refine and enrich uranium, Hanford Engineer Works was built outside Richland, Washington to produce plutonium, and Los Alamos National Laboratory was built in New Mexico to assemble and test the weapons themselves. All three are still critical parts of the US nuclear establishment, both civilian and military. The Manhattan Project town was recreated in Oppenheimer.
• An outgrowth of the nuclear development project, the US Department of Energy National Laboratories system consists of facilities all over the country working on various projects of national security, scientific research, and energy and economic interest. Argonne National Laboratory and Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, both near Chicago, occupy massive tracts of land and have residential blocks for visiting scientists from around the world, functioning as towns of several thousand people.
• Huntsville, Alabama. The Army Ballistic Missile Agency run by Werner von Braun was based out of there, built the rocket that sent America's first satellite into orbit. As a result, rocket research moved to the local Army base, Redstone Arsenal, and the town just rolled with it from there, even spreading into multiple fields. This makes it one of the top research and tech towns in the whole United States, and it still uses the nickname Rocket City.
• Woods Hole, Massachusetts, is a major center for marine science, oceanographic education, and coastal ecology.
• Any Space Station qualifies. They're basically orbiting human settlements that exist to advance our understanding of science. To become an astronaut, you must have a degree in a STEM field, so space stations are populated by scientists and engineers by default.
• College towns are those where the campus of a university dominates the economy of said town. Its population will fluctuate greatly depending on whether classes are in session, and will tend to skew young, unmarried, and educated. Much if not most of the town's economy revolves around supporting said higher education establishment's activities — more eating establishments geared towards young adults like sports bars or fast food places over family-style sit-downs, for instance. The US has many such towns across the states as education is predominantly a state-level matter and the Morrill Acts of the late 19th century encouraged states to take advantage of federal funding and direct transfer of federally-controlled lands to to the states to be sold off, with these "land-grant" universities usually becoming the most prestigious ones in the state thanks to the extra influx of funding. In the US, places like Ann Arbor, MI (U. Michigan), the Raleigh-Chapel Hill-Durham Research Triangle of North Carolina (NC State, UNC, and Duke, respectively), Cambridge, MA (Harvard and MIT), Rochester (U of R and RIT) and Ithaca (Cornell), NY, Palo Alto (Stanford) and Berkeley (U. California), CA, and South Bend, IN (Notre Dame) have become synonymous with the college campus they're hosting; in a few cases their own names make it clear what they're there for like State College, PA (Penn State), College Station, TX (Texas A&M), and Athens, GA (UGA). Outside the US this situation is less common though not unheard of, such as with the Oxbridge universities in the UK and Bologna in Italy, home of the oldest university in Europe.
• Hsinchu in Taiwan is the major center for the island's (and the world's) semiconductor industry, spurred on by the establishment of the Hsinchu Science Park in 1980. It has since then attracted multiple research institutions and universities as well as many hi-tech companies to employ the previous' new graduates.

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