For what it's worth [
], I'm pretty sure CERN(/LHC), ESRF, SLAC Nat. Accelerator Labs, Lawrence Livermore, Lawrence Bekeley, Sandia, Princeton Plasma Phys. Lab, Brookhaven, Fermilab, Argonne Nat. Lab, TRIUMF, Sudbury Neutrino Observatory, Oak Ridge, Research Triangle Park, various institutions within the Max Planck Society, Institute for Advanced Study, Bell Labs, Xerox PARC, RAND Corporation, (and likely many others...), all have/had facilities within (at most) 100 km of a city with a population of at least 150,000 people. Several of these institutions are within commuting distance of major world cities.
In the set of nation state funded research facilities (e.g. funded by US Dept. of Energy, European Research Council, etc.) I'm willing to bet that most of the facilities are more often relatively near cities (greater than 150K pop). Many (high energy / high capital cost) facilities, employ on the orders of 1-10K staff alone.
[] (... and that Basic Science, High Energy Physics, Computational Science, Basic Tech, Corporate Research, and/or Public Policy/Economic/GeoPol research are the hard problem spaces you are alluding to...)
In the set of nation state funded research facilities (e.g. funded by US Dept. of Energy, European Research Council, etc.) I'm willing to bet that most of the facilities are more often relatively near cities (greater than 150K pop). Many (high energy / high capital cost) facilities, employ on the orders of 1-10K staff alone.
[] (... and that Basic Science, High Energy Physics, Computational Science, Basic Tech, Corporate Research, and/or Public Policy/Economic/GeoPol research are the hard problem spaces you are alluding to...)