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Recent scholarship on the characteristics of Chinese urbanism engages with the practices and possible consequences of so-called enclave urbanism, said to generate cities as agglomerations of patchworked enclaves. Acknowledging that inequality becomes explicit in supposedly self-contained enclaves, in this paper, I seek to advance the initial debate by shifting the focus onto the spaces and processes in-between the enclaves. I draw on fieldwork in Shanghai to argue that perceptions of inequality, individual and group identities, everyday cultures and, ultimately, new ways of being in and making the city are shaped amidst the in-between spaces that essentiate emerging cities in China and elsewhere: urban borderlands. I outline a research agenda around the current and future urban condition and propose the exploration of borderland urbanism as a timely new direction in urban geography.

China has seen rapid economic development and urbanization, and this has included the upgrading of traditional sanitation systems. But the speed of this transition raises concerns about the coexistence of diverging sanitation practices and their impact. This paper asks how this coexistence is experienced by low-income urban residents in Shanghai. It is based on field research during four weeks in July 2013, which involved in-depth, open-ended interviews with 20 low-income urban residents. The article concludes that these diverging everyday practices are situated at the core of urban socio-spatial differentiation, inequality, exclusion and discrimination. Particularly affected are rural-to-urban migrants and ageing working-class residents, for whom the lack of access to improved sanitation may be associated with stigmatization and social isolation. Future research should examine how changing sanitation cultures under urban development and diverging sanitation practices in different contexts can affect family ties, social relations and socio-spatial integration. To view an animated video that illustrates the ideas discussed in this paper, please visit https://youtu.be/BPEU_apfoLo