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• We adopted the pressure-state-response (PSR) framework to analyze Shanghai's global-city development. • Shanghai is facing unbalanced and inadequate spatial fragmentation problems, such as social wealth gaps between urban and rural areas, and development disparity among different districts within the city. • To become an excellent global city, Shanghai's government is using the pathway of governance to restructure its space and improve its global and regional influence. More and more cities in transitional China (e.g., Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen) have been striving to become global cities in the past three decades. To systematically study global cities, this paper adopted the pressure-state-response (PSR) framework to analyze Shanghai's global-city development. The findings showed that Shanghai facing unbalanced and inadequate spatial fragmentation problems, such as social wealth gaps between urban and rural areas, and development disparity among different districts within the city. Causes were that urban development strategies (e.g., pursuit of economic growth, and differentiated development strategies between center city and suburban cities) in the past affected the spatial fragmentations. To become an excellent global city, Shanghai's government is using the pathway of governance to restructure its space and improve its global and regional influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]