In May 2015, Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) and Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) of UK jointly issued the major project tender notice on ‘China‘s Urban Transformation’. Zhou Enlai School of Government at Nankai University and Urban Studies Department and the Scottish Centre for China Research at University of Glasgow applied for the project with a proposal titled ‘The Re-Making of Chinese Urban Neighbourhoods--Socio-Spatial Transformation and Access to Public Services’. After the independent appraisal by Chinese and British reviewers, and the joint panel discussion by NSFC and ESRC in August, the Nankai-Glasgow joint research team was granted the funding at the amount of 2,500,000 RMB and over £750,000 for respective parties. The announcement was made by British Chancellor George Osborn during his visit to China in late September 2015. Meanwhile, the detailed information was made public at the inauguration ceremony of Nankai-Glasgow Joint Graduate School on the 20^th October, 2015.

Urban transformation is a new international research topic. Since 2000, China’s urban population has increased from 460 million to 750 million; the number of cities with a population of over 1 million has grown from 90 to 142, and 6 mega-cities have the population more than ten millions. Moreover, the built-up areas of major cities have expanded by almost 60%. At the same time, the rural-to-urban migration, along with the inter-urban migration, especially of recent universities graduates, have led to the diversification of the socio-economic profile of Chinese cities. This in turn is creating new kinds of social stratification and spatial segregation within urban society.

The Nankai-Glasgow project--The Re-making of Chinese Urban Neighbourhoods, will examine the current urbanisation process in China through the perspective of neighbourhood dynamics in three different cities - Tianjin, which is near Beijing in the North China Plain; Hangzhou in the Yangtze River Delta; and Chengdu in the Sichuan Basin - each representing a fast-developing region in the country. In the following three years from 2016 to 2018, a multi-disciplinary consortium of 16 academics from Zhou Enlai School of Government at Nankai University in China and Urban Studies and the Scottish Centre for China Research at the University of Glasgow in UK will work together, based on the large sample survey and space visual statistical modeling, to systematically detect the aspects as following: the evolution of space planning of sample cities and communities; the influence of the continued economic and social transformation on the class differentiation and the community heterogeneity, also the inequality of public service, etc. The aim is to better understand the processes of social and spatial transformation, their impacts on social and economic differentiation, and the implications for emerging inequalities of income and access of key public service resources. The research project will promote the development of Nankai-Glasgow Joint Graduate School, and enhance the capacity of carrying out the inter-disciplinary collaborative research of key projects between our two universities.