Urbanization from Within: A Theory of Urban Transition from 21st-Century India (Modern South Asia)

Urbanization is typically narrated as a tale of migration and industrialization--a mass exodus from rural areas to burgeoning cities with centripetal economies.Today, however, many rural settlements are not hollowing out.Rather, they are filling up and filling in, even far beyond the fringes of large metropolitan areas. In Urbanization from Within, Gregory F. Randolph challenges our conventional understanding of how humans are becoming an increasingly urban species, revealing an alternative pathway of urban transition.Drawing on research in the Indian state of Bihar, Randolph shows that agrarian villages are transforming into urban towns through internal population growth, a bootstrapped non-farm economy, and interwoven processes of social change--a phenomenon he terms urbanization from within.In this account, urbanization is still linked to rural-urban mobility, but rather than the migrant's destination, it is the migrant's origin that is urbanizing, fueled by the circular flow of peo