Smart Solutions for the Development of Rural Communities

United Nations report "World Urbanization Prospects" (2011) predicts that 90% of European population will live in urban areas within 2050. New development processes in cities, as well as regeneration of existing degraded areas, are often made in the perspective of building a smart city. Generally, there is an attempt to design smart mobility, smart management services, smart tourism, etc.. Intelligence of a city is, however, erroneously measured as a function of the amount of technological infrastructures made available by administrations. Such infrastructures have to be considered as means to exchange information and ideas. Therefore, people, following the development of ICT and the increasing diffusion of smartphones and tablets, become users and at the same time creators of new urban landscapes, developed through the integration between physical and virtual spaces. This model of smart city is usually associated to huge metropolitan areas, where a high number of users justifies the large investment needed for ICT network implementation. In this paper we will analyse how the concept of smart city applied in rural context should assume very different connotations focusing more on issues of participation and collaboration between citizens and administrations to find economically and environmentally sustainable solutions for local problems