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.