Using an innovative approach, this book interprets the unprecedented transformation of contemporary China’s major cities. It deals with a diversity of trends and analyzes their sources.

• Offers a multi-dimensional analysis of urban life in China
• Highlights a diversity of trends in the areas of migration, criminal victimization, gated communities, and the status of women, suburbanization, and neighbourhood associations
• Each chapter includes input from both an expert on urban life in China and an 'outside' expert from the fields of sociology, geography, economics, planning, political science, history, demography, architecture, or anthropology
• An alternative theoretical perspective comparing the Chinese experience with other urban settings in the United States, Poland, Russia, Vietnam, East and South East Asia, and South America

John R. Logan is Professor of Sociology and Director of the initiative on Spatial Structures in the Social Sciences at Brown University. Founder of the Urban China Research Network, supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Dr. Logan is also a member of the editorial boards of Journal of Urban Affairs and City and Community. He was chosen Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University at Albany, SUNY, as well as Director of the Lewis Mumford Center for Comparative Urban and Regional Research. In April 2003 he was selected by American Demographics magazine as one of five social demographers whose work has most influenced his field in the last 25 years.