Space-based cooperation is an important form of interurban cooperation and a multidimensional sociospatial process concerning reterritorialization, network building, and rescaling. Based on the case study of the Shenzhen-Shanwei Special Cooperation Zone and considering three sociospatial dimensions including territory, network, and scale, the production and restructuring of interurban cooperative space is analyzed. This research suggests that the reterritorialization involved both capital and regulatory power; the network that link actors together serves as tools for political mobilization and information sharing; the key factor for rescaling is the mobilization of actors at higher scales. Common interests of relevant actors are fundamental factors of space-based interurban cooperation. Specifically, the actors at higher scales tend to embed their own interests into the political strategies crossing scales. Moreover, a complex interaction is found among the three sociospatial dimensions, with four major types of combination including identical, parallel, substitution, and realization, which could be of significance in future studies aiming to further examining the production of multidimensional space.

Since Neil Smith initiated the arguments of "politics of scale" based on his studies of the homeless, scale has become a hot topic in political geography. However, it is a pity that a comprehensive theoretical model of "politics of scale" has still not been developed despite of a large number of debates on the concept of scale itself and various empirical studies conducted in different cultures. In this article, we propose a three-step theoretical model of "politics of scale" based on the existing literature, especially the structural and post-structural perspectives to power, the second-abstraction view of scale, and the large volume of empirical studies on scalar politics. We argue that "politics of scale" is pillared on the processes of scalization, rescaling, and articulation of scale with power relations. Specifically, in "politics of scale" power relations are embedded in various forms of scale that can be mainly decomposed into size in material space, level in organizational space, and scope in discursive space. The existing scale frames or scalar relations are reshaped or rearticulated by different political actors. A three by three matrix is developed to incorporate the dazzling strategies of rescaling in terms of scaling-up, scaling-down, and rescaling. Different political actors will adopt different rescaling strategies to transform the power relations and legitimate/problematize governmental rationality according to their own interests. Several basic laws and paradoxes of "politics of scale" are summarized. The specific characteristics of "politics of scale" in China compared with its Western counterparts are also summarized, including the dominance of administrative level, underdevelopment of scaled discourses, and decisive roles of the Internet and international intervention. We also point out some issues worth further exploration, such as the problem of political justice in "politics of scale" and extension of the "geographical meaning" of scale in political geography. This article may contribute to the growing literature on scale and Chinese political geographical studies.