When smart villages meets rural diversity: Tailoring rural smartness to rural and remote areas

A growing scientific literature acknowledges the difficulty to apply the ‘smart city’ concept to rural and remote areas. Whereas the emergence of the ‘Smart Villages’, a term endorsed by the European Commission, seeks to promote a more place-based approach, it remains unaddressed whether a unique ‘Smart Villages’ concept can accommodate the wide plethora of rural territories. Through recent initiatives like the ‘Smart Islands’ and the ‘Smart Mountains’ Sila Declaration, rural communities themselves have attempted to define rural ‘smartness’ based on their territorial features. This article examines the ongoing attempts to tailor smartness to diverse rural territories. Specifically, through the analysis of EU-level documents, this article investigates how territories covered under Article 174 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union – for which the European Cohesion Policy devote a ‘special attention’ (i.e. ‘northernmost regions with very low population density and island, cross-border and mountain regions’) – conceptualize smartness applied to the unique specificities of these territories and what this implies for territorial development.