Compared with North America and Western Europe, Chinese cities used to feature a low extent of socioeconomic segregation. However, systematic analysis of the changes in socioeconomic segregation after the end of the provision of welfare housing is needed. Using residential-committee-level data from the fifth and sixth censuses of Shanghai, for the first time, this article systematically charts changes in socioeconomic segregation in Chinese cities over the period 2000–2010. Along with the emergence of high-status neighbourhoods and migrant neighbourhoods, Shanghai has grown more divided based on individual socioeconomic status. The extent of socioeconomic segregation in Shanghai was comparable to that of large US and European cities. While patterns of sociospatial divisions are different across central and suburban areas, the level of educational segregation becomes greater than that of hukou segregation. The crucial role of housing commodification in driving these changes highlights the importance of contextual and institutional factors in understanding the dynamics of segregation.

Hong Kong is a densely populated and transit-oriented Chinese city, which provides an ideal urban environment with which to study the various successful facets of land use policy as a model for potential replication to curb increasing car use in other Chinese cities. We examine the commuting mode choice of 203,900 households living in 4768 street blocks in Hong Kong from 2011 census. A street block is the smallest planning unit, made up of one or more housing estates with a homogenous built environment and socioeconomic status. The built environment is measured using the five Ds framework, an international dimensioning framework for classifying and measuring attributes of the built environment for physical activity and travel behaviors. Generalized, multi-level mixed models were applied to detect the associations between travel choice and built environment characteristics, while adjusting for socioeconomic status. Design and destination accessibility had greater effects on the choices to walk and take public transport than on the choice to drive. Density and diversity had only marginal effects on mode choice. Unexpectedly, distance to the urban center had the opposite effect on automobile use to that found in Western studies. Hong Kong residents living close to the urban center were more likely to drive for commuting trips. The contrasting findings between our study and Western studies suggest that the associations between a high-density built environment and travel choice vary with urban context.

The specification of locational attributes in hedonic houseprice models has traditionally been problematic. Whilst many studies use similar sets of structural attributes the range of locational attributes can be diverse and inconsistent both in their identification and in their measurement. To address this problem, researchers have adopted concepts related to urban configuration such as the monocentric city and the access – space trade-off model, and later multicentric and multiple accessibility models, to structure their enquiry. This has led to issues related to a priori variable specification using geometrically defined accessibility measures that can also lead to problems such as spatial autocorrelation. In this research, we investigate the use of network accessibility metrics in hedonic house price research using Cardiff, Wales as a case study. We hypothesize that a network-modelling approach to measuring accessibility will improve performance compared with conventional planar geometry specifications. We find that estimating centrality variables across a variety of spatial scales allows the impact on property prices of urban configurations to be modelled more accurately. The research shows that not all dimensions of accessibility can be adequately captured by network measures and that conventional planar geometry measures of accessibility can add additional explanatory power in certain circumstances.

Although rapid urbanization and associated rural-to-urban migration has brought in enormous economic benefits in Chinese cities, one of the negative externalities include adverse effects upon the migrant workers’ mental health. The links between housing conditions and mental health are well-established in healthy city and community planning scholarship. Nonetheless, there has thusfar been no Chinese study deciphering the links between housing conditions and mental health accounting for macro-level community environments, and no study has previously examined the nature of the relationships in locals and migrants. To overcome this research gap, we hypothesized that housing conditions may have a direct and indirect effects upon mental which may be mediated by neighbourhood satisfaction. We tested this hypothesis with the help of a household survey of 368 adult participants in Nanxiang Town, Shanghai, employing a structural equation modeling approach. Our results point to the differential pathways via which housing conditions effect mental health in locals and migrants. For locals, housing conditions have direct effects on mental health, while as for migrants, housing conditions have indirect effects on mental health, mediated via neighborhood satisfaction. Our findings have significant policy implications on building an inclusive and harmonious society. Upstream-level community interventions in the form of sustainable planning and designing of migrant neighborhoods can promote sense of community, social capital and support, thereby improving mental health and overall mental capital of Chinese cities.