This article explores the short-term and (potential) long-term influences of COVID-19 on urban China and its governance, which was characterised by increasing mobilities and delocalised societies before the outbreak. Through the analysis of 18 observation reports in 16 cities, it is revealed that the outbreak enables the government to (re-)build a location-based urban management system with the participation of residents facing the pandemic as an external threat. A paradoxical combination of low physical mobility and high information mobility occurs. The location-based lifestyle and governance pattern has been “normalised” rather than just being a temporary response to the pandemic. The re-localisation in urban China differs from the localism in western societies as it results from the combination of the state-power-based governmental action and citizens’ participation aimed at regaining location-based ontological security. The normalisation of the re-localisation tendency may bring about fundamental changes to urban China, even “after” the pandemic.

In urban China, utilitarian cycling plays a significant role in achieving sustainable mobility. Within this context, different kinds of sharing-bicycle programs equipped with new technologies/devices emerge and extend. By comparing two generations of them in Guangzhou (China), this paper explores how new technologies impact existing modes of mobility governance. First, the technical innovations, e.g., app-based bicycle locks and micro-GPS equipment, contribute to liberating emerging private companies from existing governmental regulations based on land control. Second, the adoption of these innovations not only contributes to the accumulation of cultural and symbolic capitals based on a fashionable lifestyle but also links bicycles to personal point-to-point travel data that could be translated to economic capital. Third, the discrepancy between the dispositions of the government and private companies regarding the innovations opens an opportunity for the quick extension of sharing bicycles, which brings both positive and negative consequences on citizens’ daily travel and life. The absence of other civic actors in the decision-making process accelerates the negative consequences caused by the profit-driven fast extension of sharing bicycles and the governmental top-down governing logic. These findings provide academia with implications for understanding the impact of innovations on achieving sustainable mobility.

“Community”, as a basic category of urban socio-space, has undergone evolution within academic, policy, and day-to-day life contexts in China. Through years of transitions, a kind of dual community emerged in Chinese cities before the epidemic. It encompassed a “conceptual community” based on the concept of (social) co-governance and an “experiential community” based on citizens’ daily living. The disparity between the two had given rise to a paradoxical situation in local community governance practices. The outbreak of COVID-19 brought fundamental changes to the transition process. Through the analysis of 21 recording reports during the outbreak period, we found that to contain the pandemic, the community epidemic prevention measures necessitated both these communities to overlap within a brief time frame. This led to reinforced community boundaries, the coexistence of multiple actors, the reconstruction of a sense of security-based belongingness, and the reformulation of the governance symbolic system that temporarily resolved the paradoxical governance practices. What happened under the preface of co-governance logic during the outbreak period was the coverage and shaping of the conceptual community over the experiential community, which may continue during the post-epidemic era. This study offers a relatively new approach and valuable insights into examining the long-lasting impact of the epidemic on urban social space and sustainable development in the post-epidemic era.