Borderland urbanism: Seeing between enclaves

Abstract

Recent scholarship on the characteristics of Chinese urbanism engages with the practices and possible consequences of so-called enclave urbanism, said to generate cities as agglomerations of patchworked enclaves. Acknowledging that inequality becomes explicit in supposedly self-contained enclaves, in this paper, I seek to advance the initial debate by shifting the focus onto the spaces and processes in-between the enclaves. I draw on fieldwork in Shanghai to argue that perceptions of inequality, individual and group identities, everyday cultures and, ultimately, new ways of being in and making the city are shaped amidst the in-between spaces that essentiate emerging cities in China and elsewhere: urban borderlands. I outline a research agenda around the current and future urban condition and propose the exploration of borderland urbanism as a timely new direction in urban geography.