Residential locations and residential moves between the city centre and suburb in Beijing, China

Abstract

This paper investigated the residential locations and residential moves of people with different levels of economic capital and cultural capital between the city centre and suburb in Beijing. This sheds light on the nature and meaning of these two spaces, as well as the processes of suburbanization and urban redevelopment. It was found that people with both high economic and cultural capital were the most likely to live in the city centre in 2020 and to have moved but remained in the city centre during 2010–2020, compared to the other three socioeconomic groups. This group had both the affordability and cultural inclination to stay in the city centre. In comparison, those who could also afford to live in the city centre but with low cultural capital were more likely to have moved from the city centre to the suburb, while those with low affordability but high cultural capital were more likely to have moved from the suburb to the city centre. These contrasts imply a spatial orientation towards the city centre of cultural capital and an orientation towards the suburb of economic capital. People with low economic and low cultural capital were in general more mobile in comparison.