Urban Spatial Structure And Its Evolution During The Process Of Globalization And China's Market Reform: The Case Of Shanghai

Since the reform and opening-up, urban spatial structure of Chinese cities has witnessed a series of profound changes, resulting in the impact of the restructuring of the economic system and the transformation of social structure. Therefore, the research on urban spatial structure is becoming the focus and major subject for urban studies from various academies.Based on the review of the empirical and theoretical research, especially the latest discoveries and developments, the paper proposes a comprehensive framework for the research, which includes three levels: "Social-spatial dialectic" at the macro level, "the separated structure of social-economic-institutional system" at the middle level and "the interaction system of agency-structure" at the micro level. Accordingly, urban spatial structure consists of urban economic spatial structure, urban social spatial structure and urban institutional spatial structure.According to the framework, the paper analyzes the transformation of urban economic spatial structure and urban social spatial structure of Shanghai in three aspects during the process of globalization and China's market reform, including the restructuring of economic and social structure, overall spatial structure and their evolutions, the behaviors of economic organizations and citizen. Furthermore, the paper also analyzes the impact of institutional system on urban spatial structure evolution in several aspects, such as the path of institutional change, the functions of institutional system, urban management system reform,and the changes of governments' behaviors, and etc.Based on the case study of Shanghai, the paper draws the conclusion that the causal mechanism of urban economic and social spatial structure is the producing process of space during the transformation of urban economic and social structure which are induced by globalization and China's market reform, driven by economic organizations and citizen. To some extent, urban development and structural evolution in China is induced by imposed institutional change, the interactions between government-dominated institutional change and urban space have caused the evolution of urban institutional spatial structure. As a whole, the comprehensive causal mechanism of urban spatial structure evolution are the interactions among economic organizations, citizen and governments, together with the interactions among urban economic spatial structure, social spatial structure and institutional spatial structure.