Abstract: The spatial structure of regional development has been one of the major academic concerns of both geographers and economists. In the last two decades, as a result of increasing globalization and fast technological advances, dynamics behind spatial organization of economic activities have been changing very rapidly and hence spatial arrangements of economic activities become more and more complicated. To actively participate in globalization via attracting foreign direct investment (FDI) and technological transfers, the Chinese government has established various kinds of development areas since the opening up and reform in the late 1970s and provided tax holidays to foreign investors in these areas as well as domestic investors in the high-tech sectors. After 20 years' fast development, most of these development areas become a major contribution to urban economic growth and spatial restructuring, which is a very important spatial phenomenia of development in China in the last two decades. Based on field investigations, this paper has identified three basic types of urban spatial changes resulted from the growth of development areas. They are, namely, twin-center structure, joint-zone structure, and multi-antenniform structure. The driving forces behind rapid agglomeration of economic activities in these development areas are global forces in terms of FDI (seeking favorite locations), internal spatial restructuring of the cities, and attractive investment environment of these areas. As such, the new urban spatial structure is different from that resulted from traditional urban expansion, which has profound policy implications for urban development.