No, they're not placed randomly.  The original "spots" were all created from "culturally significant landmarks" that were listed on Google Maps. Anything that was listed as a church or a museum or a historical maker, etc., was added by the programmers about 4 years ago for a different game called Ingress (same walk around concept). This was mostly played by mature people, so it didn't make the news as much. These spots were all at landmarks such as the Captain Cook statue and the historical markers at Merrill Field. Over the years, Ingres players were able to submit their own markers at spots the original programmers missed. When the Ingres programmers made this new Pokémon game, they just used all of the spots from the original ingres game. 

So, no, it's not random.  I played ingres for many years. Every time I went on vacation or a business trip, I would play the game so that I could see neat landmarks in those new areas that weren't on the tourist maps. So there's an upside to it.