Gregory F Randolph
Biographic Data
| ID | 2350121 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Gregory F Randolph |
| GIVEN NAMES | Gregory F |
| FAMILY NAME | Randolph |
| SIGNATURE | RANDOLPH G F |
| AFFILIATIONS | Georgia Institute of Technology |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3659-5192 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 11 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 33 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 11 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2017 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Telecom Expansion and Internal Migrants in Indian Cities
This paper estimates the impact of mobile phone service expansion on migration to and between cities of India during 2001–2011. We show that the number of cross‐state migrants living in urban areas of India increased significantly due to telecommunications infrastructure growth. The increased migration reflects better labor and marriage market information transmission across regions as well as a positive labor demand shock in the service sector r…
Beyond Chicago
Justus Uitermark argues that the Chicago School of Sociology offers urban studies more than a foil for critical scholarship or a reservoir of cliched biological metaphors. In our response, we concur, but we also highlight the many forms of urban scholarship that align with the Chicago School's emphasis on rich empirical research, analytical abstraction and deductive reasoning – beyond the direct descendants of Robert Park and his mentees. Across …
What shapes urban economies in transitioning agrarian regions? Evidence from places “urbanizing from within” in India
Research in some agrarian regions of India points to new forms of urbanization involving demographic densification led by natural population growth and employment shifts out of agriculture in the absence of standard drivers of structural transformation. Research into the local economic dynamics of this “urbanization from within” remains nascent, but scholarship offers two contrasting frameworks for interpretation—one emphasizing the agency of act…
Driving uneven development
One of India's most important decarbonization strategies involves transitioning its automobile industry from combustion engine to electric vehicles. In this paper, we examine the emerging geography of India's nascent EV sector toward understanding how policy and technological changes surrounding the energy transition are intersecting with regional development pathways, and with what implications for uneven development. We utilize sectoral and wor…
Services-Led Structural Transformation and Translocal Householding
This article argues that two distinctive features of India’s development pathway—its agriculture-to-services leap and its high levels of temporary, circular migration—are interlinked and mutually reinforcing. First, we mobilize multiple literatures to show that economic growth led by export services produces a polarized labor market in India’s prosperous cities, drawing rural–urban migrants but failing to provide them permanent footholds. These d…
Planning the “Ruralopolis” in India
Urban research has scarcely investigated the planning context of the “ruralopolis”—poor and predominantly agrarian regions of the Global South with very high population densities. Today, some of these regions are urbanizing, in the sense that elements of urbanism beyond density, such as a large non-farm economy, are emerging. This paper uses a case study of an Indian district in Bihar to investigate urbanizing ruralopolis settlements. I identify …
Does urbanization depend on in-migration? Demography, mobility, and India's urban transition
The urban transition is generally imagined as a large-scale permanent migration of people from villages to cities. The formation of new cities is also theorized as occurring through the migration of people. However, recent scholarship implies that parts of India may be witnessing an urbanization process that depends on natural population growth rather than in-migration. This claim carries significant implications for urban theory, but it has neve…
Is urbanisation in the Global South fundamentally different? Comparative global urban analysis for the 21st century
A vigorous debate has emerged in recent years over how to understand cities of the Global South. A pivotal issue in this debate is whether urbanisation processes in the South are so fundamentally different from historical and current urbanisation in the Global North that many of the theories developed from studying the latter have limited utility in application to the former. In this article, we review evidence from a range of disciplines on rece…
Planning in the Era of Regional Divergence
Planners tend to think and work at the scale of the neighborhood and city. We argue that a wider analytical lens focusing on extralocal economic forces—specifically, growing inequality between regions—is essential to understanding contemporary urban problems. The growth of interregional inequality is stimulating a national dialogue on place-based policies that would benefit substantially from planning expertise. We point to three ways that planni…
Urbanization beyond the Metropolis
How are urban population and its growth distributed across urban settlements of different sizes? In the Global South, this is a critical planning question, yet its answer is muddled by contradictory claims in the literature and inconsistent data. Using a new dataset measuring urbanization from 1975 to 2015, we find that urban populations in the South are less concentrated in megacities than in the North—contrary to conventional wisdom. Given an e…
An Analysis of ‘Migrant-intensity’ in India and Indonesia
Emerging economies are witnessing the large-scale movement of internal migrants. While the popular discourse on internal migration imagines migrants from villages flooding into the large metropolis, scholarship is increasingly emphasizing the existence of multiple migration pathways, as well as the emergence of more dispersed patterns of urbanization. To root these discussions in particular geographies, this paper introduces the concept of ‘migra…
Is urbanisation in the Global South fundamentally different? Comparative global urban analysis for the 21st century
A vigorous debate has emerged in recent years over how to understand cities of the Global South. A pivotal issue in this debate is whether urbanisation processes in the South are so fundamentally different from historical and current urbanisation in the Global North that many of the theories developed from studying the latter have limited utility in application to the former. In this article, we review evidence from a range of disciplines on rece…
Urbanization beyond the Metropolis
How are urban population and its growth distributed across urban settlements of different sizes? In the Global South, this is a critical planning question, yet its answer is muddled by contradictory claims in the literature and inconsistent data. Using a new dataset measuring urbanization from 1975 to 2015, we find that urban populations in the South are less concentrated in megacities than in the North—contrary to conventional wisdom. Given an e…
Does urbanization depend on in-migration? Demography, mobility, and India's urban transition
The urban transition is generally imagined as a large-scale permanent migration of people from villages to cities. The formation of new cities is also theorized as occurring through the migration of people. However, recent scholarship implies that parts of India may be witnessing an urbanization process that depends on natural population growth rather than in-migration. This claim carries significant implications for urban theory, but it has neve…
Planning the “Ruralopolis” in India
Urban research has scarcely investigated the planning context of the “ruralopolis”—poor and predominantly agrarian regions of the Global South with very high population densities. Today, some of these regions are urbanizing, in the sense that elements of urbanism beyond density, such as a large non-farm economy, are emerging. This paper uses a case study of an Indian district in Bihar to investigate urbanizing ruralopolis settlements. I identify …
An Analysis of ‘Migrant-intensity’ in India and Indonesia
Emerging economies are witnessing the large-scale movement of internal migrants. While the popular discourse on internal migration imagines migrants from villages flooding into the large metropolis, scholarship is increasingly emphasizing the existence of multiple migration pathways, as well as the emergence of more dispersed patterns of urbanization. To root these discussions in particular geographies, this paper introduces the concept of ‘migra…
Urbanization beyond the Metropolis
How are urban population and its growth distributed across urban settlements of different sizes? In the Global South, this is a critical planning question, yet its answer is muddled by contradictory claims in the literature and inconsistent data. Using a new dataset measuring urbanization from 1975 to 2015, we find that urban populations in the South are less concentrated in megacities than in the North—contrary to conventional wisdom. Given an e…
Planning in the Era of Regional Divergence
Planners tend to think and work at the scale of the neighborhood and city. We argue that a wider analytical lens focusing on extralocal economic forces—specifically, growing inequality between regions—is essential to understanding contemporary urban problems. The growth of interregional inequality is stimulating a national dialogue on place-based policies that would benefit substantially from planning expertise. We point to three ways that planni…
Is urbanisation in the Global South fundamentally different? Comparative global urban analysis for the 21st century
A vigorous debate has emerged in recent years over how to understand cities of the Global South. A pivotal issue in this debate is whether urbanisation processes in the South are so fundamentally different from historical and current urbanisation in the Global North that many of the theories developed from studying the latter have limited utility in application to the former. In this article, we review evidence from a range of disciplines on rece…
Planning the “Ruralopolis” in India
Urban research has scarcely investigated the planning context of the “ruralopolis”—poor and predominantly agrarian regions of the Global South with very high population densities. Today, some of these regions are urbanizing, in the sense that elements of urbanism beyond density, such as a large non-farm economy, are emerging. This paper uses a case study of an Indian district in Bihar to investigate urbanizing ruralopolis settlements. I identify …
Does urbanization depend on in-migration? Demography, mobility, and India's urban transition
The urban transition is generally imagined as a large-scale permanent migration of people from villages to cities. The formation of new cities is also theorized as occurring through the migration of people. However, recent scholarship implies that parts of India may be witnessing an urbanization process that depends on natural population growth rather than in-migration. This claim carries significant implications for urban theory, but it has neve…
Driving uneven development
One of India's most important decarbonization strategies involves transitioning its automobile industry from combustion engine to electric vehicles. In this paper, we examine the emerging geography of India's nascent EV sector toward understanding how policy and technological changes surrounding the energy transition are intersecting with regional development pathways, and with what implications for uneven development. We utilize sectoral and wor…
Services-Led Structural Transformation and Translocal Householding
This article argues that two distinctive features of India’s development pathway—its agriculture-to-services leap and its high levels of temporary, circular migration—are interlinked and mutually reinforcing. First, we mobilize multiple literatures to show that economic growth led by export services produces a polarized labor market in India’s prosperous cities, drawing rural–urban migrants but failing to provide them permanent footholds. These d…
Telecom Expansion and Internal Migrants in Indian Cities
This paper estimates the impact of mobile phone service expansion on migration to and between cities of India during 2001–2011. We show that the number of cross‐state migrants living in urban areas of India increased significantly due to telecommunications infrastructure growth. The increased migration reflects better labor and marriage market information transmission across regions as well as a positive labor demand shock in the service sector r…
Beyond Chicago
Justus Uitermark argues that the Chicago School of Sociology offers urban studies more than a foil for critical scholarship or a reservoir of cliched biological metaphors. In our response, we concur, but we also highlight the many forms of urban scholarship that align with the Chicago School's emphasis on rich empirical research, analytical abstraction and deductive reasoning – beyond the direct descendants of Robert Park and his mentees. Across …
What shapes urban economies in transitioning agrarian regions? Evidence from places “urbanizing from within” in India
Research in some agrarian regions of India points to new forms of urbanization involving demographic densification led by natural population growth and employment shifts out of agriculture in the absence of standard drivers of structural transformation. Research into the local economic dynamics of this “urbanization from within” remains nascent, but scholarship offers two contrasting frameworks for interpretation—one emphasizing the agency of act…
Economic geography (7 works) · Geography (7 works) · Urbanization (6 works) · Economic growth (5 works) · Economics (5 works) · Urban and Rural Development Challenges (5 works) · Population (4 works) · Sociology (4 works) · Internal migration (3 works) · Political science (3 works)