This research investigates the interplay between urban transformation and residential mobility in Shanghai, China, examining how patterns of residential mobility both reflect and shape the city’s evolving socio-spatial dynamics. It shows how shifts in housing reform, economic transformation, and urban regeneration have reconfigured residents’ movements, choices, and social positioning over time through interacting institutional and social logics. The research is grounded in an in-depth case study of Bugaoli, a historic longtang neighbourhood typified by dense, lane-style housing in Shanghai, to examine how residents’ life-course intersect with rapid urban change.

The research findings to be presented reveal in Bugaoli, for local residents, urban regeneration is not merely a physical improvement but an institutional reconfiguration that may alter their social positions and the distribution of urban resources. This perception leads residents worry that the benefits and resources originally theirs may, after urban regeneration, be taken over by more powerful or wealthier actors. Specifically, urban regeneration often only enhances the physical dimensions of communities, yet it struggles to inherit or substitute the emotional and cultural senses of belonging that residents cherish. For young residents, sufficiently high relocation compensation may serve as a pivotal opportunity for achieving class mobility. However, for elderly residents, departing from their original communities entails the loss of familiar social networks and life rhythms. Meanwhile, for lower income individuals, such compensation increasingly displaces them toward more distant suburbs. Consequently, demolition and compensation compel urban regeneration policies to confront multiple, mutually conflicting, household objectives during implementation. Therefore, the urban regeneration policies aim to improve the physical environment while preserving residents’ resources and social stability, but these goals often conflict, creating complex interest struggles and institutional challenges.