EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Towards smart, digitalised rural regions and communities – Policies, best practices and case studies

Pekka Leviäkangas, Signe Sønvisen, Diego Casado-Mansilla, Marius Mikalsen, Andrea Cimmino, Anastassios Drosou and Shahid Hussain

Technology in Society, 2025, vol. 81, issue C

Abstract: Rural communities and regions face specific challenges in terms of thin markets, low population density, and long distances. Also, the demographics of these communities are often skewed towards the elderly, and the socioeconomics is characterized by higher share of low-income populations. While the concept of urban smart communities is quite well established, such as Smart Cities, the concept of smart rural region communities is only beginning to gain scholarly attention. Smart rural communities can be understood as rural areas and communities that build on their existing strengths and assets as well as on developing new opportunities based on the aforementioned. Traditional and new networks and services can be improved by utilizing digital telecommunication technologies, innovations, and better use of data and knowledge to benefit the communities. Investing in both physical and digital connectivity, and building digital environments for innovative services, economic sustainability, jobs, and social capital can be enhanced, thus contributing to active and live rural communities. Consequently, the development of smart rural communities and regions begins to emerge in research. What is becoming evident is that achieving the ambitions of smart rural communities requires not only digital technologies but also innovation of commercial and social services, as well as better digital capabilities and skills to bridge the existing – and in places the widening - divide between rural and urban communities.

Date: 2025
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160791X25000144
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:teinso:v:81:y:2025:i:c:s0160791x25000144

DOI: 10.1016/j.techsoc.2025.102824

Access Statistics for this article

Technology in Society is currently edited by Charla Griffy-Brown

More articles in Technology in Society from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().

 
Page updated 2025-07-19
Handle: RePEc:eee:teinso:v:81:y:2025:i:c:s0160791x25000144