Local stakeholders’ narratives about large-scale urban development: The Zhejiang Hangzhou Future Sci-Tech City

The development of high-tech industrial parks has transformed the urban landscape in China. However, little is known of the perception of these changes by those affected by their planning and implementation. In order to shed light on this issue, we conducted a study of the Zhejiang Hangzhou Future Sci-Tech City, informed by field research on the environmental and socioeconomic status of the area and semi-structured interviews with stakeholders (residents, workers and government representatives). The data was collected and analysed using a grounded theory approach and modelled via a structural topic model (STM) to identify the most significant issues that people raised in relation to the development of the high-tech industrial park. The main finding of the study is the clear and shared perception of growing prosperity, associated with the improvements to both economic and social infrastructure and the attendant employment and business opportunities. Stakeholders also highlighted improvements to the area’s landscape quality. Nonetheless, stakeholders also identified a set of concerns centred on the threat to cultural identity, the reduction of agricultural land and the diminishing of diversity and flexibility of pathways to urban development. It is these concerns that, in their view, should serve to frame future phases of the Future Sci-Tech City construction. 高科技工业园区的发展改变了中国的城市景观。但是，关于受其规划和实施影响的人们对这些变化的看法，我们知之甚少。为了了解这个问题，我们对浙江杭州未来科技城进行了一项研究，我们的研究基于对该地区环境和社会经济状况的实地研究、以及与利益相关者（居民、工人和政府代表）的半结构化访谈。我们使用扎根理论方法收集和分析数据，并通过结构主题模型（STM）进行数据建模，以确定人们针对高科技工业园区发展提出的最重要问题。该研究的主要发现是，人们有一种明确的共同看法，即经济和社会基础设施的改善以及随之而来的就业和商业机会带来了经济的日趋繁荣。利益相关者还强调了该地区景观质量的改善。尽管如此，利益相关者还是提出了一系列问题，这些问题集中在对文化认同的威胁、农业用地的减少、以及城市发展途径的多样性和灵活性的减少。在他们看来，这些担忧恰好会有助于构建未来科技城建设的未来阶段。