Silicon Abbey?
This is more about the built environment and power of cities than property law, but the Centre for Cities has released a map using Patent Office data to track the patent applications issued per head in the UK's major towns and cities.
Cambridge and Gloucester top the list of the number of applications, but there are some surprising results. Hastings, for example, produces 4.4 patents per 100,000 people, beating the residents of Southampton and Portsmouth, but being beaten by Bournemouth (Silicon Beach? - should I stop?). Sheffield produces 5.62 patents per 100,000 people.
Cambridge, with its two universities and its science park and its cluster of tech firms and venture capitalists ("Silicon Fen") is producing vastly more patents than any other British city. These figures are per head, so this is presumably a combination of small-ish population and large number of patents at work – but nonetheless, it’s so far out ahead that it’s fair to call it a trend.
Of the other cities that make those lists, several (Bristol, Edinburgh, Sheffield, Coventry) house major universities. Others can probably credit their links to the military (Aldershot) or the security services (Gloucester, which is just up the road from Chelthenham and GCHQ).”
