Given the rapid diversification and mutation of public space and public life across the globe, this article theorises epistemologies of publicness that move the research agenda beyond the conceptual straitjacket of presence, accessibility and visibility. It develops three theoretical approaches: public space as situated and lived; public space as assemblage; and public space as a liminal zone between inclusion and exclusion. Signposting more open-ended, flexible, processual, performative and ambivalent conceptions of publicness and public space, this article represents one of the first attempts to systematically map the permutations of new theoretical and conceptual developments in the research of public space.

China is undergoing an urban revolution. In 2011 more than half of the total population resided in cities and towns for the first time in history. Over the last two decades urban China scholars have actively engaged in dialogues with urbanists from different disciplines and different urban contexts. In consequence, urban China studies have embarked on a trail of rapid diversification and proliferation, moving beyond the topics of urbanisation and urban expansion to address a variety of issues echoing the latest developments in the Chinese city. Overall, urban China studies are witnessing a transition from a focus on economic development and spatial changes, to diverse social groups and the multifaceted experiences of living in rapidly changing cities. This virtual special issue (VSI) summarises the progress of urban China studies since the Economic Reform was launched in the 1970s. On the one hand, it delineates a broad picture of intellectual advancement and knowledge production in the field of urban China research. On the other hand, it identifies some emerging new themes that have not been well represented but are of potentially great significance in the comprehension and theorisation of Chinese urbanism. A total of 24 articles published in Urban Studies have been selected to represent, albeit in necessarily circumscribed form, the scope of urban China studies in this journal. They are distributed across four well-established themes: (1) globalisation and the making of global cities; (2) land and housing development; (3) urban poverty and socio-spatial inequality; (4) rural migrants and their urban experiences. We also highlight three emerging frontiers: (1) urban fragmentation, enclaves and public space; (2) consumption, middle class aestheticisation and urban culture; (3) the right to the city and urban activism. The editorial concludes by identifying some key gaps in the extant literature and some potentially productive future directions.

This article approaches the question of Anglo-American hegemony in urban studies by examining publication and citation patterns. The past one or two decades have witnessed critical arguments about how knowledge production in social sciences is characterised by centre–periphery relations, and risks universalising US–American and European knowledge and epistemology. While not much systematic analysis has been done to address the extent to which urban knowledge has been shaped by Anglo-American centrism, it is not difficult to tell that the field is dominated by the Anglophone world in terms of authorship, institutional affiliation, the cities under scrutiny, and the urban theories arising. This article undertakes systematic analysis by collecting papers published between 1990 and 2010, in journals indexed by the categories ‘Geography’ and ‘Urban Studies’ in the ISI Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) database. We develop a series of analyses by examining the sites of knowledge production, contributors, key research interests, and the circulation/impact of works. We also single out research on urban China to explore questions such as the place of research on non-Anglo-American contexts in international forums. In all, this article argues that the dominant position of the Anglophone world in the production and circulation of urban knowledge is clearly discernible. But the Anglophone dominance does not necessarily mean that other research interests and orientations have not found a footing. Instead, we suggest that the growing but still small niche of urban China research presents tremendous opportunities for generating cross-context dialogues. The potential has not been fully delivered, as yet.

The recycling of e-waste by the informal sector has brought countries in the Global South raw materials (e.g. metals and plastics), second-hand electronic equipment and components, and economic opportunities in conjunction with appalling environmental pollutions and health problems. Despite the longstanding international and national legislation regulating transnational trade and domestic recycling, informal e-waste economies are still clustering in many Global South countries. This study offers historically and geographically specific explanations of this conundrum, by interrogating the multi-scalar regulatory frameworks in which the informal e-waste economies and their pollutions are embedded, by drawing on China, particularly the former global e-waste hub-Guiyu town, as the case study. We argue that the contested and problematic application of current international and national legislation in regulating e-waste is in part pertaining to the slippery definition of what counts as “e-waste” and its paradoxical nature as both resources and pollutants. At the global scale, trajectories of global e-waste flows are shaped by the multitude of loopholes, contradictions and ambiguous articles left by the Basel Convention and by different countries’ disparate attitudes towards the e-waste trade. At the national scale, the ambiguities and contradictions in the Basel Convention have been passed on to and shaped China’s national e-waste regulatory frameworks. China’s equivocal legislation, paradoxical attitude, and formal enterprises’ weak competence contribute to the rise of informal e-waste recycling in Guiyu. Yet, China’s e-waste regime has been greatly restructured within the past decade, with formal recycling enterprises playing an increasingly significant role.