Analysis of the Mechanisms Contributing to Spatial Mismatch in Transitional Chinese Cities

Abstract

The decades of economic boom have brought about intensive spatial transformation and restructuring since market-oriented reforms in China. Such spatial adjustments have generated the manifestation of spatial mismatch in Chinese large cities. The writers, taking Shanghai for example, aim to investigate the mechanisms contributing to spatial mismatch in the transitional period of Chinese cities. It finds that the mechanisms are generalized as follows: (1) urban regeneration, village requisition, and affordable housing programs resettle a large number of socially disadvantaged people into urban fringes; (2) transaction restrictions, housing resources shortages, unavailability of housing finance, and unaffordable moving costs make disadvantaged people less able to move closer to employment centers in inner cities; and (3) insufficient transport services in urban fringes aggravate the geographical disconnection of disadvantaged people with employment centers.