Are Smart Villages Just Smaller Smart Cities? Call for a Region-Type-Specific Approach to the Smartification of Communities

Abstract

This paper presents a conception for a region-type specific approach for understanding and developing region-specific smart communities in predominantly rural areas. The concept is based on a discussion of the topic of smart communities from the points of view of (1) data economy, (2) regional communities, and (3) smart technologies as well as a discussion of “smartness” in context of smart communities. The paper points out the lack of differentiation between the different smartcommunity types in current models and typologies and argues that even a differentiated view is not sufficient in face of the high level of connection and interplay between the different communities. The paper proposes to develop a region-specific smartification model that considers the regionspecific context and interaction with more urbanized regions, especially for rural areas.