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With the dramatic transformation of China’s industrial landscape, since the late 1990s, adaptive reuse of industrial heritage for cultural purposes has become a widely occurring phenomenon in major Chinese cities. The existing literature mainly focusses on specific cases, yet sees heritage conservation similarly at both national and regional scale and rarely identifies the main factors behind the production of China’s industrial-heritage reuse. The purpose of this paper is to examine the differences in heritage reuse outcomes among three Chinese mega-cities and explore the driving factors influencing the differences.

This paper compares selected industrial-heritage cultural precincts in Beijing, Shanghai and Chongqing, and explores the local intervening factors influencing differences in their reuse patterns, including the history of industrial development, the availability of the nineteenth and/or twentieth century industrial buildings, the existence of cultural capital and the prevalence of supportive regional government policy.

The industrial-heritage reuse in the three cities is highly regional. In Beijing, the adaptation of industrial heritage has resulted from the activities of large-scale artist communities and the local government’s promotion of the city’s cultural influence; while in Shanghai, successful and more commercially oriented “sea culture” artists, private developers in creative industries and the “creative industry cluster” policy make important contributions. Chongqing in contrast, is still at the early stage of heritage conservation, as demonstrated by its adaptive reuse outcomes. Considering its less-developed local cultural economy, Chongqing needs to adopt a broader range of development strategies.

The paper contributes to knowledge by revealing that the production of industrial-heritage cultural precincts in Chinese mega-cities is influenced by regional level factors, including the types of industrial heritage, the spontaneous participation of artist communities and the encouragement of cultural policy.

This paper describes the parent–child relationships of upper-middle-class Chinese parents and their adolescent children who were “parachuted” to the United States for private high schools. With parents remaining in China and children in the United States, thousands of miles away, such a transnational educational arrangement complicates the already volatile parent–child relationships during the adolescent years. Through ethnographic interviews of 41 students and 33 parents, I demonstrate different forms of child–parent relationships in a transnational education setting: those who found that the further physical and temporal distance has brought the parent–child relationship closer through frequent communications, children who experienced “accelerated growth” yet questioned the necessity, and delicate parent–child relationships due to increasing transnational cross-cultural or intergenerational differences. These types of parent–child relationships are not comprehensive of all the lived experiences of the “parachute generation,” yet they shed new light on transnational education and the unintended emotional dimensions of educational migration. In a transnational context for an economically well-off group, parental absence or separation of children and parents is no longer a clear-cut concept and has different layers of meanings, taking into account the frequency of communication, duration of spring and winter breaks and the existence of third-party agents such as for-profit intermediaries (or educational consultants) and host families. The diverse patterns of parent–child relations reveal the heterogeneity and complexities of “doing family” across geographic spaces and global educational hierarchies, as well as the roles of communication technologies, the tempo of mobilities and educational intermediaries.

This paper aims to examine the unique Chinese context by analyzing the city labels (e.g. smart city and eco city) used by Chinese local governments at or above the provincial capital level to represent themselves (adopted city labels) and the developmental pathways they actually pursued (adopted developmental pathways).

The authors compared the city brand choices to those anticipated based on their geographic and economic contexts (predicted city labels and developmental pathways) as well as the directives outlined in national planning documents (imposed city labels and developmental pathways). The authors identified ten main categories of city labels used to designate themselves and establish the frequency of their use based on municipal plan documents, economic and geographic data and national plan documents and policy reports, respectively.

The authors discovered that both local economic development and geographic factors, as well as top-down administrative influences, significantly impact city branding strategies in the 38 Chinese cities studied. When these models fall short in predicting adopted city labels and pathways, it is often because cities favor a service-oriented reputation over a manufacturing-focused one, and they prefer diverse, multifaceted industrial images to uniform ones.

The originality and value of this paper lie in its contribution to the academic literature on city branding by developing a predictive model for brand development at the municipal level, with explicit attention to the national-local nexus. The paper’s approach differs from existing research in the first cluster of city branding by not addressing issues of stakeholder involvement or adoption and implementation processes. Additionally, the paper’s focus on the political power dynamics at the national level and urban governance details at the municipal level provides a unique perspective on the topic. Overall, this paper provides a valuable contribution to the field of city branding by expanding the understanding of brand development and its impact on the socioeconomic environment.

The aim of the present study is to add to the existing research on online city branding by studying how metropolitan cities are internationally positioned using the internet and online branding. The focus is on objectives and strategies, method and expression (including five illustrations), and challenges in online city branding.

The article relies on a single-case study approach, using the Chinese city of Chengdu as a case and illustration. Methods used are interviews, observations and documentation (including online material).

The study illustrates how Chengdu uses online city branding in its international positioning. Chengdu's online branding is influenced by certain imagery, as well as challenges. Collaboration and endorsement crystalize as central elements in Chengdu's online city branding.

This article and study can be seen as an important element in broadening the understanding for online city branding to international audiences.

The study offers insights to practitioners on how online city branding is carried out in a Chinese context and in the city of Chengdu.

The study can be regarded as an important contribution to an area of practice and research which still is fairly new and unexplored, and an area that hitherto has not been well covered in the international literature.

In recent years, fast urban expansion in China has stimulated rapid energy consumption growth and increased environmental pollution. Therefore, it is important to utilize clean and renewable energy in district heating for the sustainable urban development. This study aimed to investigate the environmental and economic impacts of one hot dry rock (HDR) geothermal energy-based heating system in a life cycle framework.

By using the input–output-based life cycle analysis model, the energy consumption, CO₂ emission and other pollutants of the HDR-based heating system were evaluated and then compared with those of other four heating systems based on burning coal or natural gas. The life cycle costs of the HDR-based heating system were also analyzed.

The results showed that using HDR geothermal energy for heating can significantly reduce fossil fuel consumption, CO₂ emission as well as environmental pollution, and its life cycle costs are also competitive.

This study not only evaluated the environmental and economic impacts of the HDR-based heating system in a life cycle framework but also provided a methodological life cycle assessment framework that can estimate both economic and environmental benefits, which can be used in policy making for China’s urban development.

The disengaged form of urban experience, addressed by Louis Wirth in his classic essay, is worthy of further theorization and contextualization. The themes such as indifference, alienation, and disengagement, once the focus of early urban theorists, remain underdeveloped in contemporary China. Through the case study of gangpiao (“Hong Kong drifters”), the highly educated youth from mainland China to Hong Kong, this paper aims to offer an apt and logical illustration of how a disengaged form of urban experience is contingently made.

Between 2017 and 2020, the author and his assistants interviewed 50 mainland Chinese youth, aged between 25 and 35, in Hong Kong and explored how they perceive, conceive and relate themselves to the city.

Most informants, instead of devoting themselves to the local community life, embrace a way of life characterized by impersonal, superficial and transitory contacts. The author argues that their feeling of estrangement and indifference, rather than a “natural” outcome of economic progress, is an ethos primarily nurtured by China’s governing strategy and tactics of segregation. The transnational space of gangpiao is a part of the process of reproduction of the Chinese state across territories.

Except for a very limited number of studies, most scholars and critics barely examine the responsibilities of non-state actors for the dominant project of urbanism. The themes such as indifference, alienation and disengagement, once the focus of early urban theorists, remain underdeveloped in the new era of Chinese urban culture. In other words, more scholarly attention should be paid to the circumstances under which people disregard local differences and envision and embrace a “generic” form of city and way of urban life.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of final delivery solutions on e-shopping usage behaviour by modelling their interaction across residents living in different neighourhoods with availabilities of different facilities, including automated parcel stations (APSs), collection and delivery points (CDPs), and the direct-to-home delivery stations of parcel express firms (PEFs).

The study is based on a survey on e-shopping behaviour and delivery awareness. A mixed structural equation model is used to predict the interactions among availability of final delivery facilities (AFDF), level of satisfaction with delivery services and e-shopping usage after controlling individual socioeconomic attributes and retail environment.

Compared with AFDF, individual socioeconomic attributes are the most influential factors contributing to e-shopping spending and frequency. Improving AFDF has only a slight effect on e-shopping spending, while a larger impact on e-shopping frequency and perceived satisfaction to delivery services is observed. The quantity of PEF delivery stations has a relatively large influence on e-shopping usage but the effects of APSs and CDPs are not as strong as expected.

The causality between final delivery solutions and e-shopping behaviour can be further tested by using social experiments or longitudinal data.

All findings will help business and public policy decision makers to derive a balanced and effective deployment of final delivery solutions, which is also referential for other emerging markets similar to China.

This study theoretically contributes to the international literature by examining the heterogeneous effects of final delivery solutions on different aspects of e-shopping engagement.

The purpose of this study is to examine how five different multi-level governance (MLG) models affect place branding (PB) performance in Saudi Arabia.

In hierarchical administrative systems, central governments exert control on PB, influencing its effectiveness. While PB as such is widely studied, the effect of MLG on PB performance in centralized administrative systems remains understudied. The study is approached as a multiple case study of nine cities.

The study reveals that different MLG models indeed affect PB performance differently. Direct access to central leadership and resources boosts branding performance, while privatization promotes flexibility with similarly positive effects. Study findings, furthermore, show that some cities are considered too big to fail. Cities such as Riyadh and Neom are of prime importance and receive plenty of resources and leadership attention, while others are considered peripheral, are under-resourced and branding performance suffers accordingly. Emerging differences in PB performance associated with different MLG models are thus likely to deepen the gap between urban economic winners and losers.

This paper introduces five MLG models based on the actors involved in PB, their interactions and their access to resources. For each model, this paper assesses other factors which may influence the effectiveness of PB as well, such as access to the national leadership and staff capacity. This research thereby adds to the literature by identifying specific factors within MLG models influencing PB performance in hierarchical administrative systems.

Building on Kavaratzis and Hatch’s (2013) identity-based place branding model, this paper aims to explore the spatial and social dimensions of the place brand identity formation process and how residents used social media to participate in the process of shaping a city brand during a crisis.

Adopting an interpretive and social constructionist approach, this study analyses a sample of 187 short videos created and posted by Wuhan residents on the social media app Douyin during a COVID-19 lockdown. The authors read the videos as cultural texts and analysed underlying social processes in the construction of place brand identity by residents.

This study develops an adapted conceptual model of place identity formation unfolding in four sub-processes: expressing, impressing, mirroring and reflecting, and each sub-process subsumes two dimensions: the social and the spatial. In addition, this study empirically describes how residents participated in place branding processes in two ways, namely, their construction of city brand identity via communicative practice and their exertion of changes to a city brand during a crisis. The model reveals how place brands emerge and can be transformed.

This paper amplifies Kavaratzis and Hatch's (2013) identity-based place branding model by testing it in an empirical study and highlighting the social and spatial dimensions. This paper contributes to research about participatory place branding by exploring how residents participated in the place branding process. This study analysed short videos on social media, a new communication format, rather than textual narratives dominating past studies.