Politics of mobility and the urban segregation in Shanghai, China

Existing literature suggests that the mobility perspective can extend urban segregation research from static to non-static. As such, the mobility between residential origins and travel destinations may represent a new form of urban segregation. This research advances an integrated mobility-centric framework grounded in the politics of mobility. By synthesizing housing tenure types (homeowners versus renters), housing costs, commuting modes (public transport versus driving), and job opportunities, this framework reveals how mobility-based segregation is systematically produced and being maintained. In the case of Shanghai, we identify a notable socio-spatial division of mobility among the privileged central zone, the comfortable suburban zone, and the marginalized outer zone, based on analyses of high-resolution data on housing, actual real-time commuting times and job opportunities. Furthermore, the monocentric structure in Shanghai is not merely due to individuals’ mobility conditions; rather, it is profoundly related to the historically and contextually specific politics of mobility that have continually (re)constructed a hierarchical structure of urban space. We argue that the contemporary segregation is rooted in a historically institutionalized form of stratified mobility. Urban governance has prioritized the socio-spatial zone of strategically important activities while inevitably undermining the mobility of marginalized people and space.