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Abstract
The study aims to uncover the socio-spatial patterns in post-reform China and chooses Shenzhen, a brand new city established as a direct product of China's economic reform and open door policy for this case study.
The study first examines Shenzhen's socio-spatial differentiation between and within three major residential areas, namely policy related housing areas, self-construction quarters and commodity-housing complexes. The 2000 census is analysed using both cartographic and factorial ecological techniques, According to the analyses, the predominant factors determining the division of Shenzhen's urban areas are socio-economic status and residence status (Hukou), and a new structure of housing consumption classes has emerged in contemporary Shenzhen.
The next section of the study compares and contrasts the Shenzhen case with a generic model of the situation in traditional Chinese cities. As an atypical city in terms of development strategies, economic growth and natural resources (land resources, topography, etc.), Shenzhen's urban social space has exhibited several distinctive characteristics, such as the absence of a ring of work-unit compounds in the inner city and a 'thick' fabric of historical legacies. It is argued that one of the key factors differentiating Shenzhen's residential pattern from traditional Chinese cities is largely associated with its outstanding performance in marketization.
The third and complementary part of the study attempts to look further into Shenzhen's pure commodity-housing areas, excluding policy-related housing and self-construction areas from consideration. This enables a description and explanation of the pattern of Shenzhen's residential differentiation under the unique influence of market forces. The study deploys data on property transactions from Shenzhen's secondary housing market 10 depict Shenzhen's residential pattern through examining household behaviour and individual decision-making (social expansion hedonic modelling is employed for analysis). It is pointed out that Shenzhen's social space is comparable to the emerging patterns of Western cities.
The study is significant from three perspectives. First, it endeavours to explore the configuration of urban socio-spatial structure in China in the context of unprecedented pace and character of change. Second, the specificity of Shenzhen's development history as a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) and a new city makes it an unusual case for socio-spatial studies. Third, the study's focus on Shenzhen, one of the most representative emerging cities in China, complements and extends existing research.