Urban studies in China remains spatially biased despite nationwide expansion

The geography of urban studies reflects and reinforces how cities are prioritized in local governance and represented within the global architecture of urban knowledge. China, emblematic of rapid Global South urbanization, provides a valuable yet unexamined lens into the geographic dynamics of urban knowledge. Using 21,929 peer-reviewed Chinese-language articles collected from the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) database (1992–2024), we map and explain the geography and drivers of urban case studies in China. Despite the nationwide expansion of scholarly attention, case studies remain concentrated: eastern cities, which constitute just 27.76% of all prefecture-level units, account for more than half (51.47%) of all cases. Furthermore, the twenty most populous cities dominate annual research outputs. Over time, concentration has eased (the Gini coefficient decreased from 0.976 to 0.842) as hotspots shifted from coastal metropolises to the dual cores of Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei and the Yangtze River Delta. Case selection is shaped by data accessibility, academic capacity, policy orientation, socioeconomic development, and historical inertia: cities with richer data environments are studied 5.5 times more often, and research attention follows a roughly two-year cycle of self-reinforcement. For cities long overshadowed by metropolitan dominance, expanding data openness and fostering more agile research agendas could help overcome academic, economic, and political constraints, thus broadening scholarly visibility and advancing a more balanced, diverse, and globally inclusive urban science.