Understanding Shiminhua in Chinese Greater Bay Area: internalizing urban identity and negotiating place attachment

This article aims to investigate the following question: How does the process of urbanization of rural–urban migrants (shiminhua) unfold in Chinese cities? It focuses on the urbanization of people in the contextualized concept of shiminhua. This paper mainly adopted qualitative methods of focus group discussions (FGDs) and semi‐structured interviews in three cities in the Greater Bay Area of China (GBA). The results indicate that shiminhua is an incremental process of gaining internalized urban identity and negotiated place attachment. It implies that successful shiminhua process in the GBA consists of efforts from multiple levels of stakeholders. Regional policy and urban governance strategy should understand shiminhua more comprehensively to facilitate successful shiminhua process.