Building Smart Government or Developing Industry?: Study on the Designs of Local Smart City Pilot Projects in China

Existing researches have paid little attentions to how policy makers choose certain smart city development approaches or design their smart city construction plans. This study tries to explore the designs of Chinese local governments' smart city pilot projects. Using the grounded theory method, documents of fifty-three cities' smart city development plans are encoded. From them, activities proposed in various smart city subfields are identified. Then, a hierarchical cluster analysis is conducted to reveal different smart city design models of Chinese local governments. Analysis results show that some governments are willing to support local industry when some others prefer to reengineering governance process or investing in management of information and data. This study testifies the divergences among practitioners' understandings of constructing smart city.