ABSTRACT
This chapter engages the notion of the production of urban space in China as a state project through an examination of spatial economic transformation in the lower Yangzi delta. The morphology of urban forms in this region arise from shifting local institutional structures and how these are embedded in the reconfiguration and consolidation of political and administrative jurisdiction and space. Areas within extended metropolitan regions in coastal China are repositioning themselves in the wider space economy by adopting functional specialization. This chapter invokes an analytical framework that unpacks local institutional and administrative frameworks to illustrate how these phenomena have impacted the emergence of a new urban form in the region of the lower Yangzi delta. Information for this analysis was collected over a period of more than two decades of fieldwork in the region, including extended discussions with key informants involved with the reform of administrative divisions and in the local Land Resource Management Bureau.1
