Understanding complex viewpoints in smart sustainable cities: The experience of Suzhou, China: The experience of Suzhou, China

Smart sustainable cities have been seen as catalysts for transforming the socio-economic environments of the city to be more knowledge-based and eco-friendly. By combining two buzzwords, ‘sustainability’ and ‘smart cities’, planners face the complex challenge of managing their definitional impreciseness, which often involves contrasting views and different expectations in delivering smart sustainable cities in real life. The stakeholders' perception study is critical because the attitudes of professionals and policymakers may impact the strategic directions of smart sustainable cities, especially when no clear consensus is built on this emerging issue. The research uses Q methodology to measure the different perspectives and subjective opinions to develop new ideas by capturing human practice, in this case, from smart city practitioners in China. The research assists planning practice that requires multiple implementation processes to deal with the complexity and dynamics of diverse issues involved in smart sustainable cities.