Inspired by The Economist article “Oxford and Cambridge are too small”, I found myself asking whether the challenges afflicting Britain’s most celebrated innovation arc are truly exceptional—or rather symptomatic of a broader European problem. Do Europe’s leading science and technology (S&T) hubs all face the same tension between intellectual excellence and physical constraint? Does proximity still matter in an era of remote work and digital collaboration? And most importantly: can any of them realistically rival Silicon Valley—or are they merely academic archipelagos adrift in a sea of planning inertia?