Smart(er) rural areas: Framing ‘smart villages’ for conceptual development and EU policy

This article considers smart rurality within wider European debates and policies addressing innovation in peripheries. It explores the meaning of ‘smart’ through a critical reading of the smart villages concept in official European Union (EU) communications. The content and structure of key EU websites and linked documents are analysed, asking how smart villages are defined and differentiated among the sources. This is followed by a framing of the EU discourse on smart villages that seeks to characterise the problems that smart villages are aimed to address, their causes, effects and prescribed solutions. Partly due to the early-stage formation of the concept, a lack of richness in the smart village discourse is found. The sources indicate a range of problem definitions and limited treatment solutions, while the causal interpretation and moral evaluation behind smart villages are both lacking. To gain a better understanding of the potentials for smartness, implementation challenges and recommendations for smart villages are discussed, drawing lessons from similar innovation and smart specialisation initiatives. Finally, an outlook for conceptual development is proposed with a supporting framework to structure discursive development around smart rurality. The article thus provides for much needed academic reflection on smart villages prior to their widespread implementation. Through framing and typological thinking, it seeks to overcome current conceptual limitations that may jeopardise smart villages as a policy concept by stimulating deeper discursive development.