Abstract: In course of the urbanization at the first half of 20th Century, There were a tendency what the upper and middle class come together to the urban center and the lower class distributed over the marginal area in Chinese city, and the marginal quarters in where poor people lived were formed, Chinese urban space constituted the “center- margin” mode. By Tianjin as a case, the paper deals with the formation of the marginal quarter. The marginal quarter in where urban poor lived, its space structure, the occupational structure, life style and entertainment way of its inhabitant all had distinctive characteristic. Though the culture of marginal quarter was created from the low class of society, but it had a close relationship with the culture of the upper-class society and being an important part of modern urban culture of China.

Keyword: marginal quarter; poor people; urban lower class; Tianjin