Shifting residential and employment geography: Shanghai's bifurcated trajectory of spatial restructuring

Abstract

Persistent influx of migrants has altered the urban landscape in China. Compounding this has been the shifting geography of local population and jobs, consequential of the physical expansion of built-up areas and restructuring of the urban economy. Nowhere is more evident of such trends as in Shanghai, the country's premier metropolis and leading business hub. How has intra-urban residential geography of migrants and local population transformed over time? How are such patterns connected with changing economic and employment distribution? These are the driving questions of our research, rooted in our long-standing observations of the city's evolving urban structure. We present patterns of spatial restructuring at two different points of time: in 2000 and 2010, and the change during the decade. Here our primary purpose is to sort out important predictors affecting the residential locations of migrants and the local population, in the context of overall demographic and employment geography. While sharing a tendency to move outward and away from the urban core, they respond to distinctive calculus – residential amenities for the locals and job opportunities for migrants, a bifurcated trajectory emblematic of intensified stratification.