Smart villages in practice: A meta-synthesis of implementation experiences in Europe

The concept of Smart Village, created by the European Commission in 2017, emerged as a response to the challenges faced by low-density territories, by promoting strategies based on local potential, opportunities, and digital technologies, using participatory approaches in their design. This study analyzes how the Smart Village concept has been implemented in European rural territories and what conclusions can be drawn about this strategy from the available empirical evidence. Based on inductive analysis and synthesis, this study seeks to understand how the initiatives were configured and which elements had influenced their implementation processes. To this end, 22 scientific articles retrieved from the Web of Science and Scopus databases were analyzed, along with 14 projects from the “Smart Rural Areas in the 21st Century” program. The main findings highlight the importance of involving multiple actors in the formulation and sustainability of the initiatives, the absence of instruments for monitoring strategies, and the challenges in implementing and adopting digital technologies. These findings contribute to understanding how projects and initiatives are configured, revealing operational gaps and asymmetries between declared objectives and the ways in which the initiatives have been designed and implemented in rural contexts.