Understanding China’s city-regionalization: spatial structure and relationships between functional and institutional spaces in the Pearl River Delta

This article systematically connects the functional and institutional spaces of a city-region by revealing their spatial structures, and relationships under China’s city-regionalization. Our study constructs functional and institutional networks, particularly framing the latter through news reported on social media for intercity cooperation, compares these networks and investigates their relationships through perusing regional spatial planning, documents, and news coverage, and in-depth interview. The Pearl River Delta has been examined to contribute to the theoretical debates surrounding the relationships between functional and institutional spaces. We found that although the PRD’s functional space manifests as a polycentric structure centered on Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Dongguan, institutional space is more polycentric than functional space, with Shenzhen and Guangzhou at the core. Second, the numeral relations indicate a high positive correlation between functional and institutional networks. Third, top-down upper state-imposed governance and bottom-up spontaneous city-to-city coalition synergistically give rise to the distinct scenarios of relationships between functional and institutional spaces.