German Cities with Universities: Socioeconomic Position and University Performance

We investigated the role of universities in the prosperity of cities and regions. Performance characteristics of universities are derived from the Leiden Ranking 2020. The socioeconomic strength of a city is determined with the urban scaling methodology. Our study shows a significant relation between the presence of a university in a city and its socioeconomic indicators, particularly for larger cities, and that this is especially the case for universities with higher values of their output, impact and collaboration indicators.