The Post-Reform Sociospatial Ecology of Urban China: Shanghai

摘要

This article examines the sociospatial ecology of post-reform urban China, with a case study of Shanghai. It upholds a theoretical perspective that the sociospatial ecology of transitional urban China is not only based on the new socioeconomic factors such as marketization and globalization, but also on the old institutional system, political ideology and history. As such, residential differentiation in post-reform Shanghai is an outcome of both collective consumption and private consumption. For the first time in studying Chinese cities, the fine resolution data, i.e. data on the level of the residential committee in the fifth census, conducted in the year 2000, are used. Using methods of factorial ecology and segregation indices, it finds that social space is diversified after market reform. It is found that a process of making a new sociospatial structure is ongoing, but it is shaped by the historical legacy especially collective institutions.