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Economic liberalisation has brought fascinating changes to China's urban development by undermining state control and introducing market forces to economic decision-making, raising the fundamental question of what are the current roles of state and market in urban transformation. By using Shanghai as an example, this paper argues that the stereotype perception of rigid state intervention is no longer applicable towards an understanding of China's urban transformation. The same is true of the overwhelmingly described market in uences. Rather, urban development in contemporary China is shaped by the interplay between state and market. The state plays the key role in determining the timing, the pace and the economic and spatial con guration of Shanghai's development, while the market is an indispensable part in central and local state decision-making. With the continuous reform and economic liberalisation,China is moving towards a small government and a sea of private enterprises. Whether and how the state remains in rm control, and how the state and market interact with each other in shaping China's urban transformation remains to be seen in the present century.

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This paper examines the emerging multiple centre urban spatial structure in Beijing using housing price variation as an indicator. A random sample of 3783 apartment units was used. These apartments were recent sales in 2001, 2003 and 2005. The dataset included transaction prices and main housing attributes gathered from the Beijing Construction Committee. A hedonic price model was calibrated to investigate the importance of the different urban centres to housing price variations. The results show that multiple urban centres (such as Tian’anmen, CBD, Zhongguancun and the Olympic Centre) explain more of the variations in housing price differences in the metropolitan space than any centre does alone. The findings also reveal changes in impacts from the individual centres in the study period. These outcomes confirm that Beijing is moving towards a polycentric urban form. The emerging multiple urban centres are key factors in understanding the spatial restructuring of Beijing, especially in modelling its emerging housing market.

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