Disentangling rural smartness in European policies: a critical overview of the Smart Village concept

Valentina E. Albanese; Teresa Graziano; Valentina E. Albanese; Teresa Graziano

doi:10.3934/geosci.2024041

AIMS Geosciences

2024, Volume 10, Issue 4: 882-906. doi: 10.3934/geosci.2024041

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Research article Special Issues

Disentangling rural smartness in European policies: a critical overview of the Smart Village concept

Valentina E. Albanese ¹,
Teresa Graziano ^{2
,
,}

1.
Department of Law, Economics and Culture, University of Insubria, Como, Italy
2.
Department of Agriculture, Food and Environment, University of Catania, Catania, Italy

Received: 06 April 2024 Revised: 01 August 2024 Accepted: 19 September 2024 Published: 08 November 2024

In recent years, several policies have increasingly considered smart technologies as a potential solution to overcome territorial marginality in rural areas, where digitalization and smart innovation could help local communities address challenges such as depopulation and socio-economic deprivation. At the European scale, the Smart Village Action was launched in 2017 to address the so-called "circle of decline", showing to what extent rural smartness has been recently gaining momentum in transnational cohesion policies. This work aims to critically explore the Smart Village paradigm as a recently-emerged policy framework in rural, cohesion and/or recovery policies, investigating if and how it is variously (re)interpreted in policies and operationally applied in projects. From a methodological point of view, a qualitative policy document analysis (QPDA) and software-based content analysis were carried out on UE official documents, offering new theoretical insights and operational recommendations for understanding the concept of smartness beyond urban-centered perspectives.
- smart village,
- policy framework,
- rural areas,
- content analysis,
- European Union
Citation: Valentina E. Albanese, Teresa Graziano. Disentangling rural smartness in European policies: a critical overview of the Smart Village concept[J]. AIMS Geosciences, 2024, 10(4): 882-906. doi: 10.3934/geosci.2024041

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Abstract

In recent years, several policies have increasingly considered smart technologies as a potential solution to overcome territorial marginality in rural areas, where digitalization and smart innovation could help local communities address challenges such as depopulation and socio-economic deprivation. At the European scale, the Smart Village Action was launched in 2017 to address the so-called "circle of decline", showing to what extent rural smartness has been recently gaining momentum in transnational cohesion policies. This work aims to critically explore the Smart Village paradigm as a recently-emerged policy framework in rural, cohesion and/or recovery policies, investigating if and how it is variously (re)interpreted in policies and operationally applied in projects. From a methodological point of view, a qualitative policy document analysis (QPDA) and software-based content analysis were carried out on UE official documents, offering new theoretical insights and operational recommendations for understanding the concept of smartness beyond urban-centered perspectives.

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