Urban governance in an increasingly mobile society: the case of Chinese cities

Cities in transitional economies have experienced rising mobility and the simultaneous evolution of urban governance. This paper explores the relationship between both inter-city migration and intra-city residential mobility and urban governance, especially in the Chinese city, through theoretical reasoning and synthesizing previous works. While acknowledging that inter-city migration may force cities to improve urban governance through the agglomeration economy, I argue that, by weakening wage capitalization, inter-city migration strengthens property interests in urban governance, pushing it towards the progrowth model. The same mechanism applies to intra-city mobility. Besides, rising mobility weakens social control in the Chinese city, which faces a dilemma: grassroots governments are expected to strengthen social control after the decline of work unit, but they are gradually marginalized in private gated communities that are dominant in Chinese cities. The observed downward turn of residential mobility for local residents in the 2000s and continuously rising mobility for migrants are partly due to the homeownership effect and, as I emphasized in this paper, partly due to the protection for property owners from territorial organizations and urban governance at large.HighlightsCo-evolution of mobility and urban governance in Chinese cities.Rising mobility strengthens rent capitalization, supporting progrowth governance.Rising mobility weakens social control.The rich’s lower mobility is partly due to protection from HOAs and urban governance.