Mapping Conflicts in the Development of Smart Cities: the Experience of Using Q Methodology for Smart Gusu Project, China

The concept of smart cities is now firmly on the current urbanisation agenda around the world. Although such ideas are now widely accepted, the planning practice has experienced operational difficulties in supporting the development of smart cities in the real-life context. While great emphasis has been laid on the importance of collaboration in the development of smart cities, there has been little analysis on how to develop an empirical framework to evaluate different opinions and potential conflicts in smart cities. This paper aims to investigate the stakeholder’s perspective and attitude in the smart city development, and highlight lessons from their experience. For this purpose, the research uses Q methodology to measure attitudes and subjective opinions of smart city stakeholders. The research shows that stakeholders have expressed different priorities in the development of smart cities based on the particular standing point of the observed participants based on their work and social backgrounds. This subjective landscape on smart cities can be valuable to understand the existing debates in practice and implement projects more efficiently by mapping possible conflicts in advance