Institutions, Urban Space, and Residential Markets in Globalizing Shanghai: A Comparative Study of Housing Sale and Rental Prices

Published in Journal of Urban Affairs, 2025

Core contribution: This article compares Shanghai's housing sale and rental markets within one framework, showing that global city forces, institutions, urban space, amenities, and accessibility shape buyers and renters differently and turn homeownership into a new axis of urban inequality.

Highlights
  • Builds an integrated framework linking global, metropolitan, and local development contexts to residential market outcomes.
  • Uses open housing, amenity, and accessibility data to compare the spatial patterns and determinants of sale prices and rents.
  • Shows that renters are more sensitive to job opportunities, social services, and mobility, while buyers place greater weight on service amenities, ownership value, and investment conditions.
  • Argues that urban centers intensify exclusion as globalization and institutional advantages concentrate high-end jobs and services.
Graphical abstract comparing sale and rental housing markets in Shanghai
Graphical abstract