Distinguished University Professor and Former Chair
Department of Geography | College of Arts & Sciences
The adoption and geographic spread of new products and techniques across the earth’s surface, termed more generally innovation diffusion, was a major concern of Dr. Brown’s research. His 1966 dissertation on this topic, based on field work in Sweden under the distinguished geographer Torsten Hagerstrand and reported in a Lund Studies monograph, examined communications technology. In 1973, he initiated a large scale project examining a variety of innovations in the United States, Latin America, and Africa. This NSF supported research led to the book Innovation Diffusion: A New Perspective (1981), which was termed a unique contribution by reviews in disciplines as diverse as Marketing, Agricultural Economics, Sociology, and History of Science, as well as Geography. Earlier social science research had emphasized adoption of innovations. By contrast, Brown introduced and elaborated the idea that diffusion largely reflects the actions of entities supplying innovations, which control who has the opportunity to adopt.
A second major concern of Dr. Brown’s research was population movement. Between 1966 and 1973, he focused on residential change within the city, rural-to-urban migration, and inter-regional movements in United States settings. Extensive surveys, designed and directed by Brown, were a central component of these studies; the Ford Foundation provided partial support.
Brown developed several algorithms for studying population movements, which also have been widely used for other research purposes. For example, a procedure for delimiting functional regions has been employed in regional planning, both domestically and in Latin America.
In related activities, Brown developed several algorithms for studying population movements, which also have been widely used for other research purposes. For example, a procedure for delimiting functional regions has been employed in regional planning, both domestically and in Latin America; his ‘New Product Marketing Game’ in marketing; an algorithm for centrographic measures and spatial transformation of point patterns in sociology, and a Markov chain based simulation model in research on the diffusion of epidemics.
In 1981 Brown shifted his focus to pursue long standing interests in Latin American and Third World development issues. Initially under NSF support, and working closely with the United Nation’s Demographic Center for Latin America (Santiago Chile, San Jose Costa Rica), he directed a project on the interrelationships between development, migration, and urbanization in Third World settings. A major theme of the research was to demonstrate the high level of interrelatedness between these phenomena, which social science has tended to treat as independent of one another. Another aspect concerns the nature of development itself, which Brown saw largely as the local manifestation (articulation) of world market, or macroeconomic, forces, donor nation actions, and policies of Third World nations. This research was reported in the book Place, Migration, and Development in the Third World: An Alternative View, with Particular Reference to Population Movements, Labor Market Experiences, and Regional Change in Latin America (1991).
Brown’s later work, also supported by NSF, was concerned with frontier settlement, particularly in the Amazon Region of Ecuador. Its focus was change over time in population distribution and the transition of rudimentary trading centers to functionally mature components of a national urban system.
Brown’s later work, also supported by NSF, was concerned with frontier settlement, particularly in the Amazon Region of Ecuador.
General models of frontier development are interwoven with localized factors specific to Ecuador; also highlighted are the impacts of national-international conditions on local areas and place characteristics on individual behavior. This approach characterized Brown’s research in his later years.
Through the research described above, teaching, and lecturing Brown also gained an understanding of broad forces underlying regional economies, changes therein, and forecasting of growth/decline tendencies. Relevant here are characteristics of and trends in the location of economic activity, economic restructuring, regional labor markets, educational attainment, labor force skills, population growth, migration, and the way these factors operate both in United States and international contexts. This perspective informed a 1990s project on socio-economic change, economic restructuring, and population shifts in locales comprising the Ohio River Valley. Supported by USDA, the research involved an interdisciplinary team from Economics, Geography, and Sociology.
Starting around 2010, Brown focused on race/ethnicity in terms of residential patterning within urban areas, and immigration profile differences among US metropolitan areas.
Starting around 2010, Brown focused on race/ethnicity in terms of residential patterning within urban areas, and immigration profile differences among US metropolitan areas. An element of this is a new framework for understanding racial/ethnic clustering and intermixing within the city, identified as Market-Led Pluralism. Also being examined are affordable housing policy (American Dream) impacts in terms of their spatial variation and foreclosure in a population vulnerability context.
Overall, Brown’s research record included four books/monographs, approximately one-hundred-ten articles in thirty-two geography and/or social science journals, editorship of and publication in four discussion paper series that played a significant role in the development of current geographic thought; guest editorships for the prominent journal Economic Geography; editor and/or editorial board member of several major geography and social science journals, including four editorial board terms with the Annals of the Association of American Geographers and one/two with Geographical Analysis, International Regional Science Review, International Studies Quarterly, Social Science Quarterly; review panel member for prominent granting organizations such as Ford, Guggenheim, National Science Foundations, and NIH; author and presenter of approximately one hundred twenty papers at national and international conferences; and several research grants, primarily from the National Science Foundation.
Brown’s research record is strongly linked to advising and mentoring students; notably 33 Ph.D. and 17 Post-Doctoral advisees.
Brown’s research record is strongly linked to advising and mentoring students; notably 33 Ph.D. and 17 Post-Doctoral advisees. Most occupy academic positions in Ph.D. granting departments of the United States and other countries; several have developed national/international reputations in their own right including a Guggenheim Fellow, four Fulbright Fellows, three recipients of AAG Honors, one James R. Anderson Medal for Applied Geography, former editors of the Annals of the Association of American Geographers and Professional Geographer, author of a leading urban geography textbook, nine former/present members of NSF review panels, eight former/present councilors of the Association of American Geographers, one former President of the Association of American Geographers; seventeen have served as departmental chairs or equivalent administrative positions; fourteen are women and/or minorities; one has won the Distinguished Minority Alumni Award of the Ohio State University.
This incredible record led to several recognitions. In 1981 and 1995 Brown was included in the historical record of the Association of American Geographers, as represented by its Geographers on Film series; in 1983 he received the Honors Award of the Association of American Geographers; in 1984, the Distinguished Scholar Award of the Ohio State University; in 1985, a Guggenheim Fellowship; in 1993, the Alumni Distinguished Teaching Award of the Ohio State University, in 1996 the Distinguished Mentor Awardof the National Council for Geographic Education, in 2007 the Walter Isard Awardfor Scholarship in Regional Science, and in 2008 a Lifetime Achievement Honors Award of the AAG. He was elected Vice-President of the Association of American Geographers for 1995-96, President for 1996-97. In 1996 Brown was designated as Distinguished University Professor of the Ohio State University, and served as Chair of Geography 1995-2003.
Professor Brown passed away in April 2014. Please see the Photos + Video page for images of his memorial service hosted by the Department of Geography at The Ohio State University.