June 05, 2018 | Working Paper
  • Headline: Measuring "Grayness" in Global Cities
  • Intro Text: Sripad Motiram and Vamsi Vakulabharanam of PERI consider situations where individuals belonging to multiple groups inhabit a space that can be divided into smaller distinguishable units, a feature characterizing many cities in the world.  They conceptualize a phenomenon that they term "Grayness" - a combination of spatial integration based upon group-identity and income. Grayness is high when cities display a high degree of spatial co-existence in terms of both identity and income. They develop an index of Grayness, then apply this Grayness index to both the Indian city of Hyderabad and selected American cities.
  • Type of publication: Working Paper
  • Research or In The Media: Research
  • Research Area: Asian Political Economy
  • Publication Date: 2018-06-05
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  • Authors:
    • Add Authors: Sripad Motiram
    • Add Authors: Vamsi Vakulabharanam
  • Show in Front Page Modules: Yes
  • JEL Codes: D63
On the Measurement of "Grayness" of Cities

Abstract

We consider a situation where individuals belonging to multiple groups inhabit a space that can be divided into smaller distinguishable units, a feature characterizing many cities in the world. When data on an economic attribute (in our case, income) is available, we conceptualize a phenomenon that we refer to as “Grayness" - a combination of spatial integration based upon group-identity and income. Grayness is high when cities display a high degree of spatial co-existence in terms of both identity and income. We lay down some desirable properties of a measure of Grayness and develop a simple and intuitive index that satisfies them. We provide an illustration by using data from the Indian city of Hyderabad, and selected American cities.

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