Delivering on the Concept of Smart Villages – in Search of an Enabling Theory

Abstract

Smart villages have been increasingly heralded as a development strategy for the European countryside but with no clear understanding as to what comprises a smart village. Frequently, commentators associate smartness with quality of IT infrastructure and the ability to use it. An alternative perspective argues that the smartness can be better understood as a phenomenon associated with self-organised, bottom-up community action that either addresses the weaknesses of both state and market to contribute to local people’s wellbeing or exploits emergent opportunities through collective means. Using Scotland as an example, policy architectures can now be seen to be explicitly designed to support bottom-up community action. This paper explores this alternative notion of smartness based on communities’ capacities to self-organise and deliver a range of developments that support wellbeing and resilience and explores some of the challenges arising from this approach.

Whose Narrative is it Anyway? Narratives of Social Innovation in Rural Areas – A Comparative Analysis of Community‐Led Initiatives in Scotland and Spain

“…At the same time, this evidences that a call for SI with no explicit public and external support to those most disadvantaged rural communities can increase territorial disparities (Bock 2016). This is the risk, for instance, when the idea of ‘Smart Villages’ is promoted on the basis of technology and digital infrastructure rather than on people’s skills and through the creation of external networks (Slee 2019).…”

Unequal futures of rural mobility: Challenges for a “Smart Countryside”

“…The concept of a Smart Countryside is based on combinations of digital technologies and community-based human and social capital to support business innovation and wider community development (Slee, 2019). This emphasises the “place-based” focus of contemporary rural development thinking (Horlings and Marsden, 2014; OECD, 2018), whilst simultaneously appreciating the scope for digital and technological advances to support innovation, extend connectivity and enhance wellbeing.…”

“…A future rural mobility strategy, supported by emerging digital and transport technologies, can facilitate and drive rural growth in the context of a “Smart Countryside” analogous to, but different from, the “smart city” (Naldi et al., 2015; Slee, 2019). Specifically, the article challenges the view of the UK Department of Transport’s Future of Mobility strategy which states that: “Using our towns and cities as testbeds for innovation, we will trial and improve upon products and services that can be adapted across the country and across the world” (Department for Transport, 2019: 15).…”

Regional Centres of Expertise (RCEs), Green Economies and Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) as Dialogue: Who is Expert?

“…Endogenous development, by definition, carries a number of distinguishing characteristics, including local determination and control of development options, and the retention of benefits of development within communities. Endogenous development (i.e., as having an internal cause or origin) stands in contrast to exogenous development as dependent upon, and developing from, external factors, such as the global market and central governmental decision-making (Slee, 1993). In 1991, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), as well as the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP), and the World Wildlife Federation (WWF) suggested ‘sustainable livelihoods’ (SLs) as a useful concept that is perhaps closer to the lives of individuals and communities, in contrast to ‘sustainable development’ as associated in more formal ways with governmental policies in close relationship with global markets (Leal Filho, 2000).…”