중국 도시들은 개혁개방과 지구화와의 접속 하에서 보다 복잡해진 공간지형 위에 처해있다. 이에 본고에서는 중국 도시사 연구에서 그 도시공간에 대한 인식이 어떤 성과와 한계를 남기고 있는지 검토해보는 작업이 의미가 있다고 판단하고, 그 간의 상해사 연구를 공간적 맥락에서 정리해보았다. 기존 연구에서 서구-중국, 근대-전통의 이원적 구도가 상대적으로 강조되고 단일도시로서 그 도시 내부의 분절적 공간에 초점이 두어졌다고 정리하고, 향후 연구에서는 권역적, 초국적 공간을 포함해서 그 공간적 맥락을 거시적으로 확대해야 할 필요성이 있다고 전망했다.

The intention of urban history has been nourished as the abstract level is improved on the concept of urban spatiality, the analysis target. As a matter of fact, history is a field of study originally accustomed to specifying places and time, so all the historical researches on cities with geographical definitions are included in it as well. While researchers are deepening such a discussion, however, they have gradually accepted the awareness that cities are not a simply physical space but a social constrction reflecting social activities, further having influence on social activities again. Therefore, it seems that such a new understanding method about urban spatiality has made the intention of urban history much richer. Today under the process of globalization, urban spatiality is understood to have been more complicated. As transnational exchanges are expanded into a ``global`` level in terms of both material and human resources, cities are being placed on more complicated spatial topography at a nod of such an exchange circuit. In this aspect, explaining properly how urban spatiality has been organized is emerging as a more important assignment in the research on urban history. Thus, with interest in what achievements the research on the history of Shanghai has made in the perception of its urban spatiality and what assignments it has remained, this study intends to examine how spatial context has been dealt in the research on the modern urban history of Shanghai and further predict the directivity of researches on the Chinese modern urban history in the future.