Älykkäistä kylistä älykkäisiin suurkaupunkeihin: Pienet ja keskikokoiset kaupungit älykkään alueen rakentajina

Small and medium-sized cities (SMCs) dominate the urban field in numbers. Nevertheless, these cities have long been underestimated in urban research, urban policy, rural policy and regional policy. They are also in the shadows among smart cities. This paper looks at why it is like this, what has led to an increase in interest, and why also SMCs are needed to build smart areas. The variety of SMCs is wide, so it has been difficult to produce comparable data. Big cities also dominate both development, research and political debate. However, SMCs play an important role as a balancer, mediator and developer, both between urban and rural development and as a builder of a smart region. Also small and medium-sized smart cities exist, but that is more noticeable than something the cities themselves say. There is much more potential and opportunities. The key to cities’ own smartness can be found in growth, like in smart city concept, in smart shrinking or resilience, as well as adapting the role as the smart rural city. The goals and needs of smart regional development are largely the same regardless of location, and many smart solutions are possible regardless of location. In other words, there is a common language for place-independent development. The importance of the smart region perspective will increase as the smart concept expands to different regional levels, for example from smart villages to smart big cities. Therefore, smartness in smart regions starts from the fact that all levels of the regional hierarchy should have common priorities for smart regional development