Abstract
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In the literature on the territorial aspects of digital transformation and related smart policies, the co-called ’smart city approach’ is still over-represented. This should come as no surprise, since digital innovations were originally developed in (large) cities and were mainly designed to address urban problems. However, as the benefits of smart solutions can not only be felt in urbanized areas, but can also play a major role in reducing the disadvantages of rural areas, research on rural digitalization has increasingly used the terms 'smart rural area' and 'smart village' since the 2010s, along the lines of 'smart city'. The paper starts from the definitions and problems of digital rural development as we know them from international and Hungarian literature, and based on these, it tries to present the emergence of the so-called ’smart village approach’ in Hungary, outlining its first results and most important challenges.
My starting point is that the history of digital rural development in Hungary so far can be divided into three more or less overlapping phases:
(a) the preceding phase, where bottom-up good practices at local level, which are still scattered, should be highlighted;
(b) the preparatory phase, during which the issue of digitalization is slowly gaining ground in the public administration and spatial development discourse, but the importance of policies specifically targeted at the smart village problem is still in the background;
(c) and finally, a phase of maturation, where the smart village problem becomes a key actor in smart rural development policies.
In my paper, I will focus on the most promising (and, perhaps, the first) development of the phase of maturation that is just beginning, the Digital Village Programme, announced in November 2020, and its achievements so far. I will look in detail at how the Digital Village Programme is trying to be more than a financial (grant) support system for digitalization, and how the Programme's managing and operating institutions, such as the Digital Wellbeing Nonprofit Ltd. and others, can contribute to these goals. I would like to touch upon the role of my workplace, the University of Public Service, in the Digital Village Programme, especially the Digital Spatial Development Specialist and Referent training courses, which were launched for the first time in 2018. In addition, I would not neglect to present the stakeholders, i.e. local actors interested in the digitalization of rural areas, willing and able to take action. I will examine the continuity between the local actors of the first two phases (e.g. the developers of bottom-up good practices, the beneficiaries of the digitalization-related tenders of the Hungarian Village Programme launched from 2019) and those who are currently interested in the Digital Village Programme. Finally, through the examples of one or two prominent municipalities, using the available tender materials and/or sociological interviews, I will also seek to answer how the concept of ‘smart village’ is perceived by the stakeholders, how the meaning of the concept has changed from the preceding phases to the present day, and what reasons (e.g. the impact of the governmental discourse embodied in the Digital Village Programme, the COVID-19 pandemic, etc.) may explain this.
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