Are the well-known facts about urbanization in the United States also true for the developing world? We compare American metropolitan areas with comparable geographic units in Brazil, China and India. Both Gibrat's Law and Zipf's Law seem to hold as well in Brazil as in the U.S., but China and...

Are the well-known facts about urbanization in the United States also true for the developing world? We compare American metropolitan areas with comparable geographic units in Brazil, China and India. Both Gibrat's Law and Zipf's Law seem to hold as well in Brazil as in the U.S., but China and...

Is it possible for a state or a city to decouple its growth trajectory from that of its country? The answer to this question is not binary. Rather, it comes expressed in degrees that vary across places, and ultimately depends on the interaction of the factors that a sub-national unit shares with...