Sixteenth International Conference on Environmental, Cultural, Economic & Social Sustainability

Abstract

Within the European Union (EU) Smart Villages are becoming an important concept for enhancing sustainable and smart rural development. The paper promotes a multidisciplinary smart village concept that advocates for participative and community-oriented approaches to sustainable rural development. Special attention is given to various levels of sustainability which is often understood as either environmental or economic sustainability, but should be understood broader. The authors also advocate for more fieldwork-based approaches and discuss the importance of social and cultural sustainability if smart village concepts and solutions are to be holistic, successful and wide-accepted. Great emphasis is also given to the policy level. Firstly, the need for harmonization of local, regional, national and EU aspirations is accelerated. This is connected to the importance of finding synergies between EU-governed, top-down political frameworks and giving the voice to community-led bottom-up initiatives for the community development. Finally, the smart village concept advocated in this paper is strongly promoting a cross-sectoral integration and collaborations across various areas: environment and spatial planning, rural development, agriculture, social affairs, labour opportunities, education etc. that should be reconciled in order to guarantee the most sustainable results/solutions possible.