Smart Villages: Where Can They Happen?
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
In the purpose of the study, it is clear that new technologies can be a strategic tool in maintaining the rural world. I think that the concept of sustainability could also be highlighted. It is important to point out that new technologies allow smart decision making, an increase in economic and social profitability and favor sustainability. The bibliography in mpdi on these items is very abundant. I recommend promoting the concept of territorial development linked to sustainability
New technologies (5 G, computer applications, etc.) are the vehicle and reaching Smart villages is a strategic objective ... There is also a process of technological adoption and innovation. They should have to be developed
I read the title and I read the objective…
But it is not clear to me:
- if the effect of the Smart village on the rural world is evaluated,
- If you evaluate, show how to apply the Smart village strategy
- If you compare three populations with different levels of application
- The methodology to be applied is also not clear to me ...
I recommend clarifying this….
Line 37-43 “The significan…” before the objetive
“The authors of the present paper have carried out a broad analysis of scientific studies on the smart-village concept and broader rural development issues”
Indicate the main works and the findings found
In this round..
Indicate the main works and the findings found The authors with the information of the 13 provinces and their variables can try to build a model that shows the level of importance of reaching the Smart villages, or perhaps the effect on development. I propose that they do a quantitative analysis.
Another possibility is with the set of variables, social, economic and digitization of processes, to see the heterogeneity between zones (Multivariate analysis; factorial and cluster) and to develop a classification of provinces according to the degree of Samart village achieved.
The work is good and the information available is interesting. I beg you to make an effort to develop a quantitative methodology that allows weighing the effects and that is applicable to other areas.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Thank you for appreciating the relationship between the smart village concept and the concept of sustainable development. In the first version of the article, we described such an analogy, but it is not the aim of the study. Nevertheless, we added references to the works of other authors, who also draw attention to this relationship.
We agree with you that when talking about a policy, its possible application should be shown. So we have added a passage on what smart village support is likely to look like in the future CAP. We have used the experience of the CAP 21-27 Strategic Plan Group (on smart villages) and the SV European Network for Rural Development thematic group. It is worth noting that only in some Member States the work is at such a stage that some materials are already available. These include Finland and Poland. However, discussions are still ongoing and nothing is decided.
We tried to describe the methodology of the study in more detail. Our ambition was not empirical operationalization, i.e. classification of communes according to the level of smart development. It seems to us that at the current level of conceptualization of the smart village concept it is still impossible. Not only because of the lack of appropriate measures from public statistics, but also because of the still unsatisfactory level of inventory of smart rural activities. All the more so if we talk about the level of communes and for the whole country (2174 LAUs).
However, we decided to check statistically, the hypothesis concerning the interdependence of the level of socio-economic development and accessibility of ICT infrastructure in rural areas. We believe that it is a prerequisite for any strategy based on new technologies.
The attached file lists the exact changes we made to the text.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.doc
Reviewer 2 Report
The article seems to deal with two groups of problems, the link of which has not been proven too clearly. The first group is rural depopulation and the aging. The notion of the predominant migration of rural inhabitants to cities is changing as part of the transition from productive to post-productive society. In fact, the internal migration movements are opposite. Suburbia, but also many rural settlements outside urbanized areas are growing due to counter-urbanization, naturbanization, but also for economic reasons. All European regions are aging, but the largest are the cities and the smallest rural settlements. Stable rural settlements are usually slower aging. Indeed, on the example of Poland, the authors also point out that the eastern part of Poland (former Russian occupation) which differs significantly from the rest of the country. The reasons for migration are not mentioned very much in the paper. It can be assumed that young and educated people leave the countryside because they are looking for prestigious and well-paid work, rich social contacts, or they run away from too much social control in the village. In this, the concept of smart village will not help much. People go to the countryside for cheaper housing, a quieter environment (pensioners) or are nature lovers. Teleworking can help in this respect.
Rather than depopulation and aging, the smart village concept can prevent the social exclusion of vulnerable people. These are people who are not physically mobile (seniors, disabled, people on parental leave, poor people, teenagers). However, this is not a specific problem of depopulating rural areas, but of today's society in general. People in suburbs, which often do not even have basic services, can be affected, as it is assumed that everyone commutes to the city. But those who cannot commute have a big problem. Green widows are part of this problem. Measures taken in relation to COVID19 may examine some approaches.
Another myth is the idea that, in any case, the depopulation of all rural settlements must be prevented. The Central European settlement system has evolved from 800 to 1000 years. Many villages have disappeared since then. This is related, inter alia, to the development of technology. If rural transport took place on foot or on a bullock, a relatively dense network of settlements was required. The high mobility of the rural population allows the concentration of settlements in places that can be equipped with at least basic services. Many small settlements are apparently destined to disappear, or more precisely, to transform them into settlements of second housing and recreation. The problem may arise where there is a risk of depopulation of whole regions, but this is not very likely and the causes would have to be much stronger than poor access to services.
Polish conditions are certainly specific, but the general trends seem to apply to the Polish countryside as well. The optimal solution for the paper would be to choose either the issues of the demographic development of the Polish countryside and discuss possible connections with the concept of smart village (less attractive), or conversely to clarify the concept of smart village and discuss its contribution to Polish rural development (current). In this relation, it would be also suitable to change the title of the paper.
Concerning the literature, let me highlight the last number of the European Countryside journal (4/2019).
Author Response
In the European Commission's original assumptions, the smart village concept was to respond primarily to the depopulation of remote rural areas. However, we are aware that rural decline is inevitable. However, your comments have made us aware that it is currently very difficult to operationalize this problem and link it closely to this concept.
As a result, we have reduced the fragment of the results on the ageing population. At the same time, we have developed the section on changes in the total population. We can see that this concept fits all rural areas, not only the problematic ones. However, as researchers of spatial differentiation on the level of socio-economic development of rural areas, we know that the greatest potential lies in the areas of population influx. We suppose that smart villages will develop better there too.
Under the influence of your review, we were considered another problem — access to the internet, which is considered a prerequisite for local development (including smart villages). We have therefore made a hypothesis that the level of socio-economic development is interdependent with access to the internet infrastructure. The results of this analysis have been added to 3.2. chapter.
Thus, the changes in the article are a kind of consensus between the different solutions you propose. We believe that to assess the impact of smart villages on rural development, their strengths and weaknesses must first be well diagnosed. The current stage of implementation of this approach is so early that we can still talk about its potential rather than impact.
The attached file lists the exact changes we made to the text.
Author Response File: Author Response.doc
Reviewer 3 Report
This is a generally well written rumination on the scope for ICT to act as a stimulator for rural revival in Poland, using the ICT element of the EU's articulation of the smart villages as an organising framework. The paper presents some compelling mapped evidence of the extent of demographic decline in Poland and its variation across Poland and presents generalised explanations of this decline. However, while appealing to high resolution data to describe the extent of the problem, the authors do not explain anomalies well, either those at regional scale or those arising more locally. Why does Podcarpackie with poor internet infrastructure and high levels of remoteness appear to buck the trend, apart from in the border administrative districts? And if we use fine grained data, what can we learn from those areas that are outperforming their peers, while facing very similar structural constraints? Once we take out the urban commuting zones, what is driving positive anomalies? The implicit hypothesis is that it is the level of ICT infrastructure, but this hypothesis is never tested or grounded empirically. So the paper's argument hinges around the believe that ICT smartness can stem depopulation and bring about rural revival. If there is evidence that ICT drives differential performance of communities at microlevel at regional or micro level it needs to be presented. I don't doubt the potential of ICT to help in public admin, business and general access to public and private services, but I cannot see any compelling evidence that a big city standard ICT system would bring about transformative change in, for example, the deeply rural parts of Lubelskie region. There are likely to be other drivers of socio-economic change that will explain these differences (amenity potential e.g. Tatras; rural areas in hinterlands of vibrant small town economies maybe; rural gminas near nodal towns on rail or road networks maybe; or maybe gminas with high levels of social capital or with particular industries that have thrived as a result of a successful entrepreneur). Lastly, if a smart villages policy is applied to Poland what might it entail? Would it be open to villages and or clusters of villages and what would it fund? And what of the villages that did not seek funding and fell further behind because they lacked human and social capital to engineer any recovery? Does that matter? I repeat that the paper presents some nice fine resolution data (though the make up of the index in Figure 1 needs to be explained in a footnote) but fails to capitalise on explaining these differences or in explaining the capacity of ICT to reduce them. As a final point, can I suggest you pass the final draft past a native English speaker which would result in minor improvements to readability.
Author Response
In Poland, two factors affecting the spatial arrangement of rural areas continue to be of key importance. The first factor is historical, connected with Poland’s past borders (especially in the 19th and early 20th century). The eastern and central part of the country, with a low level of development, was under Russian rule during the partitions. The agricultural function still dominates the local economic structure there. The western regions (under Prussian rule during the partitions) have come to develop multifunctional local economies. The other factor is linked to the location concerning regional centres, i.e. centres around cities (especially big and medium-sized ones) versus areas with a peripheral location in relation to the urban network. Between them is an intermediate zone forming a continuum between the central and peripheral zones. In the revised text we focused more on population changes, including functional urban areas.
According to your suggestions, we decided to prove statistically that the level of socio-economic development is interdependent with the development of ICT networks in rural areas. The results clearly show that such interdependence exists. We assumed that access to the internet (the next issue is its quality) is a necessary condition for implementing concepts based on new technologies.
Your comment on how to support the smart village concept has led us to add one more strand. Using our experience in the work of the CAP 21-27 Strategic Plan Group (on smart villages) and the SV European Network for Rural Development thematic group, we have added an extract about what the two governments (Finnish and Polish) initially propose to support the SV. However, it should be added that these solutions are still being developed.
The final text was checked by a native English speaker. We hope that it has contributed to improving readability.
The attached file lists the exact changes we made to the text.
Author Response File: Author Response.doc
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
General
I think it is a good job and very useful. All my suggestions are with the sole objective of improving it, giving it "more research consistency" and formally being more organized. The work combines research with a practical application of development. Congratulations
- Introduction
The maintenance of the rural population and their ways of life acquires a new dimension with the covid-19, and a back to healthy lifestyles. It would be interesting and topical to highlight this fact. Currently rural life is understood in a pejorative sense, "as second level" compared to urban life. Today with the covid-19 a new need arises from the need to recover the rural world. Connectivity is the tool for the development and maintenance of livelihoods in the rural world, a guarantee for public health.
Digital technologies (5G etc,) will favor the adoption of dynamic capabilities (absorption, integration, innovation) and the increase in sustainability and the final results of companies (De-Pablos et al., 2020; Sustainability Journal). Innovation is important because it will allow the development of new business models and the creation of value in rural areas.
"The authors believe that the sine qua non is access to the internet" ... We either support it in bibliographic citations or we propose it as a working hypothesis.
I suggest: Eliminate colloquial comments and value judgments. They are left over from a scientific text
It is a truism that the accessibility of the internet is spatially differentiated. The question is rather about its scale and nature
Assuming that the decline in rural areas is characterised by the lowest level of socio-economic development ( XXX) .. I suggest it be reinforced with a reference. The following hypothesis is tested verified: the lower the level of rural development, the lower is internet accessibility.
Line 80: The fundamental and most An important document giving direction…
See other comments in the text. In yellow
2.2. Data collection
I suggest providing more information about the database.
What kind of variables ?, available time scale? level of data aggregation?
According to the MROW study, “to obtain one evaluation that would characterise an object from many standard features, all standardised variables for each object should be summed. The evaluation of a variable that characterises an i-th object is called a ‘synthetic variable’. A synthetic variable obtained from following formula (2) assumes values within the range [0,1]:
where a’ij is the normalised value of the j-th feature in the i-th object (after the destimulant is changed to stimulant), n is number of objects, and mi is the weight factor of an i feature” [22].
I think this would be better in material and methods
Results
Spearman's rank correlation coefficient of these two spatial trends is rho=-0.6, i.e. the most underdeveloped areas are usually demographically old…
- urban commune
- the commune has changed status after 2005
-The functional urban area (FUA)
-
In material and methods, the variables and analyzes applied. They must be clarified
Page 10. It is recommended to calculate the existence of significant differences (Chi2) between Internet accessibility rate according development level
Figure 7.
I think it is not very important and also does not follow from the results obtained. Perhaps in the starting hypothesis.
Conclusions..
They are derived from the results of the study and must be consistent with the title, objective and methodology.
A general hypothesis and three partial objectives had been proposed. I think this section has to focus on responding to it.
- The hypothesis that territorial development is linked to connectivity is confirmed.
The most relevant factors were ...
The proposed measures .......
The conclusions are brief ... and do not exceed the objectives. part of the conclusions could be included in discussion
See other comments in the text. In yellow
The problem of maintaining the vitality of villages affected by depopulation and with a peripheral location in regionsrural decline implies increasingly serious socioeconomic consequences, from the point of view not only of local governments but also of regional or even national policies.
Counteracting such processes is an extremely difficult task, and the demographic changes that have occurred in some rural areas seem irreversible. Occasionally, suggestions appear that information and communication technologies could be a remedial measure for these problems. Attempts to implement such solutions in rural areas have been made for over 30 years, but initial technological
Starting:
The attention of rural stakeholders is turning to the concept of smart villages, an idea that raises great hopes for improving rural residents’ standard of living
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
General
I think it is a good job and very useful. All my suggestions are with the sole objective of improving it, giving it "more research consistency" and formally being more organized. The work combines research with a practical application of development. Congratulations
Thank you for your pertinent comments, which have helped to improve this paper.
- Introduction
The maintenance of the rural population and their ways of life acquires a new dimension with the covid-19, and a back to healthy lifestyles. It would be interesting and topical to highlight this fact. Currently rural life is understood in a pejorative sense, "as second level" compared to urban life. Today with the covid-19 a new need arises from the need to recover the rural world. Connectivity is the tool for the development and maintenance of livelihoods in the rural world, a guarantee for public health.
We also believe that the coronavirus can reshape many behaviours, including those related to rural living. We emphasize this in the last paragraph of the text. This is a conscious decision, because the text was created before the pandemic and unfortunately, we are not yet able to examine these changes by adding them to the purpose of the article.
"The authors believe that the sine qua non is access to the internet" ... We either support it in bibliographic citations or we propose it as a working hypothesis.
The above-mentioned statement is related to „the lower the level of rural development, the lower is internet accessibility” hypothesis (lines 51-52).
I suggest: Eliminate colloquial comments and value judgments. They are left over from a scientific text
We have applied all of your remarks to improve the readability of the text. We agree that the scientific text should be limited in its assessment phrases.
2.2. Data collection
I suggest providing more information about the database.
What kind of variables ?, available time scale? level of data aggregation?
According to the MROW study, “to obtain one evaluation that would characterise an object from many standard features, all standardised variables for each object should be summed. The evaluation of a variable that characterises an i-th object is called a ‘synthetic variable’. A synthetic variable obtained from following formula (2) assumes values within the range [0,1]:
where a’ij is the normalised value of the j-th feature in the i-th object (after the destimulant is changed to stimulant), n is number of objects, and mi is the weight factor of an i feature” [22].
I think this would be better in material and methods
Results
Spearman's rank correlation coefficient of these two spatial trends is rho=-0.6, i.e. the most underdeveloped areas are usually demographically old…
The variables and time range used in the study were supplemented for a better understanding of the methodology. We also described the quantitative methods used. The level of aggregation of variables is explained in 2.1. Study area. The level of development is an element adapted from our other study, so for clarity, we describe its methodology in a footnote.
Page 10. It is recommended to calculate the existence of significant differences (Chi2) between Internet accessibility rate according development level
As the full population of rural and urban-rural communes in Poland is being surveyed (N=2175), we do not launch any statistical tests.
Figure 7.
I think it is not very important and also does not follow from the results obtained. Perhaps in the starting hypothesis.
However, this is an important part of the discussion, especially as we talk about smart villages as a 'process'. And for this process milestones are necessary, for some local communities it will be access to fast internet and for others the emergence of an active leader. But all these elements should be fulfilled and are interdependent.
Conclusions..
They are derived from the results of the study and must be consistent with the title, objective and methodology.
A general hypothesis and three partial objectives had been proposed. I think this section has to focus on responding to it…
The conclusions are brief ... and do not exceed the objectives. part of the conclusions could be included in discussion
See other comments in the text. In yellow
Starting:
The attention of rural stakeholders is turning to the concept of smart villages, an idea that raises great hopes for improving rural residents’ standard of living
Thank you for the proposed improvements. We shortened the opening of the conclusions as you propose. The hypothesis and objectives are explained in the first paragraph. The actions we propose (recommendations) are the last three paragraphs. We mean both actions for practice and guidelines for developing research on the SV concept.
Author Response File: Author Response.doc
Reviewer 2 Report
The changes made by the authors can be considered sufficient. The paper is now more consistent and therefore provides better information to the scientific community.
Author Response
Thank you for considering the changes in the article sufficient. A list of changes as requested by other reviewers is attached.
Author Response File: Author Response.doc
Reviewer 3 Report
2nd round review : feedback to authors
Let me have a go at the abstract to try to set the tone right:
The European Union is actively promoting the idea of “smart villages”. The increased uptake of new technology and in particular, the use of the internet, is seen as a vital part of strategies to combat rural decline. It is evident that those areas most poorly connected to the internet are those confronted by the greatest decline. The analysis in this paper is based on Poland, which at the time of EU accession had many deeply disadvantaged rural areas. Using fine-grained socio-economic data, an association can be found between weak internet access and rural decline in Poland. The preliminary conclusions about the utility of the smart villages concept as a revitalisation tool for rural Poland point to theoretical and methodological dilemmas as well as barriers to the concept’s implementation, although there is a chance they may be overcome with the continued spread of information and communication technologies in rural areas.
I am still not sure what the last sentence (largely lifted from your original) actually means. Does it mean we can overcome the theoretical and methodological dilemmas by a greater rollout of ICT. Surely the “theoretical”( I am not sure there is much theory here actually) and methodological (do you mean are SVs about ICT or people or both?) dilemmas are still there when you have rolled out ICT everywhere and there are still differences in the level of development! The real question is whether or not ICT is an equalising force, or whether there are and will continue to be variations in development prospects which can be explained at different spatial scales (overall by structural economic forces and at meso and micro scale by differences in the effectiveness of local strategies and all those social, cultural and economic factors based around collaboration, bridging bonding and linking social capital etc.
Line 34 I would add quality so it reads “availability and quality of the internet”
Line 35, Absence is better than lack.
Line 46 “conditions for” maybe change to “capacity to absorb” (as long as I have not changed your intended meaning).
Line 47 Smart villages cannot begin – smart village actors or promotors can begin.
Line 48 are these leaders paternalistic local politicians or business leaders, or community leaders or what. Who assesses “needs and capabilities”? How do you assess the ICT needs of an 85 year old single person household in frail health? Etc etc. And who conducts that analysis? There is some smart ICT work in Finland which I picked up at SV events where social care and health services can use sensors and monitors to keep elderly folk under surveillance in their own homes. But you need an ICT infrastructure and a whole raft of joined up agencies to deliver on it.
Line 55 ; At this stage should you not be testing the hypothesis of the link. The results surely come later.
Line 59 assessing whether they overlap? I would expect this to be true: that the most socio-economically disadvantaged areas would be also disadvantaged in terms of ICT infrastructure, but correlation is not the same as causation. And there are numerous possible explanatory variables out there: low wages, low educational attainment, high average age, low incomes, poor economic opportunities; lack of industries with growth potential, low trust, weak leadership and so on.
Line 76 ff Have you ever found explicit connection of EU thinking to the development economics work you cite? I have not. My suspicion is that the smart cities thinking was around in the EU and some smart rural MEPs picked up the idea and promoted a rural version?
Line 100 and thereabouts; Yes the idea is actively promoted from ENRD, Candas, OECD and Cork; and of course better connectivity is likely to be an enabling factor, especially if it is the binding constraint. I know all that. But here is my doubt. The best internet connectivity in the world will not help a village of ageing people on small farms in eastern Poland, which is remote from even a regional centre and has no real hope of economic diversification. And if everywhere has the same level of internet connectivity there will be smart villages and unsmart villages. It is the sophistication of use of internet by public private and voluntary agency that drive smartness not the ICT infrastructure’s existence.
Line 113 “civilisational backwardness” grates with me as a phrase. Surely developmentally they are backward, and in GDP terms, but civilisationally? They could teach a few individualistic, money- grubbing urbanites a thing or two about civilisation!
Line 163 migration normally used in singular
Line 165-6 Check out Eurostat and the demographics chapter: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/3217494/9210140/KS-HA-18-001-EN-N.pdf/655a00cc-6789-4b0c-9d6d-eda24d412188 it is not as simple as that. There are some quite rural areas with gains, not just suburban areas, especially in Sweden Denmark, UK, Germany and Western France.
Line 234 migration is rather than migrations are
247 and 250 “provincial capitals” would read better
Line C 256 ff In many parts of Europe there has been a tradition of working away and then eventually returning home to set up a business. I first came across this in remote rural Portugal 15+ years ago where people who had worked building sites or very manual jobs in say Frankfurt would retire early and open a small business often a café or similar in their home village. And have remittances ever been properly investigated in these depopulating districts?
Line 293 Civilisational backwardness again Please think about changing.
Lines 345,346 but it is a correlation and tells us nothing about causation. So in areas with low development more internet may not mean more development. There could be and almost certainly will be other intervening variables.
Line 385 local government normally used in singular
Line 416 ff I am a bit sceptical about this para linking smart villages and SD. Both are highly fluid concepts vulnerable to variable interpretation with all kinds of actions and activities justified under the umbrella heading of SV or SD.
Line 440 Why are private services left out? Places that have smart services (especially niche tourism) are often smart villages. This can extend to retailing (including of regional specialities). Public private or third sector actors can all operate smartly in some communities. It is never made clear in the paper how a better ICT infrastructure enhances public services. It could, e.g. by e-health, or by e-complaints about broken pavements or non-working street lights, but you never make it clear what the breakthrough in public services is from a better ICT infrastructure. (Sorry the table on the next page answers most of these questions)
Line 500 and following para: my recently deceased father in law (he was 100 years old when he died) used the internet for all sorts of purchases. So, he never supported local shops, but instead used supermarket deliveries. Being e-smart may not be local smart.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Let me have a go at the abstract to try to set the tone right:
The European Union is actively promoting the idea of “smart villages”. The increased uptake of new technology and in particular, the use of the internet, is seen as a vital part of strategies to combat rural decline. It is evident that those areas most poorly connected to the internet are those confronted by the greatest decline. The analysis in this paper is based on Poland, which at the time of EU accession had many deeply disadvantaged rural areas. Using fine-grained socio-economic data, an association can be found between weak internet access and rural decline in Poland. The preliminary conclusions about the utility of the smart villages concept as a revitalisation tool for rural Poland point to theoretical and methodological dilemmas as well as barriers to the concept’s implementation, although there is a chance they may be overcome with the continued spread of information and communication technologies in rural areas.
Thank you for steering the abstract. We accept it.
I am still not sure what the last sentence (largely lifted from your original) actually means. Does it mean we can overcome the theoretical and methodological dilemmas by a greater rollout of ICT. Surely the “theoretical”( I am not sure there is much theory here actually) and methodological (do you mean are SVs about ICT or people or both?) dilemmas are still there when you have rolled out ICT everywhere and there are still differences in the level of development! The real question is whether or not ICT is an equalising force, or whether there are and will continue to be variations in development prospects which can be explained at different spatial scales (overall by structural economic forces and at meso and micro scale by differences in the effectiveness of local strategies and all those social, cultural and economic factors based around collaboration, bridging bonding and linking social capital etc.
This is just the beginning of the discussion and a strong theoretical basis and research methodology have not yet been developed. And ICT is used to overcome barriers – lack of accessibility and digital competence (particularly evident during the pandemic). The sentence was divided to make it more understandable.
Line 34 I would add quality so it reads “availability and quality of the internet”
Of course, a 100% coverage of rural areas with a weak internet is unlikely to have a major impact on their development. We regret that data on the quality of the Internet at the LAUs level is weak in Poland.
Line 35, Absence is better than lack.
Line 46 “conditions for” maybe change to “capacity to absorb” (as long as I have not changed your intended meaning).
Agreed, fits better.
Line 47 Smart villages cannot begin – smart village actors or promotors can begin.
We intentionally used the phrase "smart villages begin" precisely to emphasize that it is people who create smart environments. We added quotes.
Line 48 are these leaders paternalistic local politicians or business leaders, or community leaders or what. Who assesses “needs and capabilities”? How do you assess the ICT needs of an 85 year old single person household in frail health? Etc etc. And who conducts that analysis? There is some smart ICT work in Finland which I picked up at SV events where social care and health services can use sensors and monitors to keep elderly folk under surveillance in their own homes. But you need an ICT infrastructure and a whole raft of joined up agencies to deliver on it.
There are also examples of such activities in health care in Poland – in the east of the country (strongly affected by depopulation) there is a mobile hospice whose staff uses e-care tools. A local leader is not someone designated (e.g. a mayor). Although it is often the political power and access to human and financial resources that determines this. But in Poland, there are hundreds or thousands of leaders who do not hold any positions in the local government. Nevertheless, they know very well the weaknesses and strengths of their villages or communes. Therefore, we advocate that the smart village concept should not be another LEADER approach – which works well but does not reach the smallest local communities. However, when it comes to ICT infrastructure, it is undoubtedly, as you wrote, the task of the government. Here, no one can judge whether someone needs the internet.
Line 55 ; At this stage should you not be testing the hypothesis of the link. The results surely come later.
The tense has been changed.
Line 59 assessing whether they overlap? I would expect this to be true: that the most socio-economically disadvantaged areas would be also disadvantaged in terms of ICT infrastructure, but correlation is not the same as causation. And there are numerous possible explanatory variables out there: low wages, low educational attainment, high average age, low incomes, poor economic opportunities; lack of industries with growth potential, low trust, weak leadership and so on.
Lines 345,346 but it is a correlation and tells us nothing about causation. So in areas with low development more internet may not mean more development. There could be and almost certainly will be other intervening variables.
We think the same. However, the first step was to check if the interdependence exists. The level of development is a synthetic measure of many variables and there was no scope for testing these factors. Now that we know about interdependency, we can prepare to explain it in the next studies.
Line 76 ff Have you ever found explicit connection of EU thinking to the development economics work you cite? I have not. My suspicion is that the smart cities thinking was around in the EU and some smart rural MEPs picked up the idea and promoted a rural version?
The smart village concept experiences cognitive dissonance. On the one hand, no one denies that smart cities are its precursor. On the other hand, the link between SC and SV is almost imperceptible. Smart villages likely were to be another ordinary EU instrument to support rural development (such as "greening"). However, it has become so interesting for researchers that it is now theoretically building up by them.
Line 100 and thereabouts; Yes the idea is actively promoted from ENRD, Candas, OECD and Cork; and of course better connectivity is likely to be an enabling factor, especially if it is the binding constraint. I know all that. But here is my doubt. The best internet connectivity in the world will not help a village of ageing people on small farms in eastern Poland, which is remote from even a regional centre and has no real hope of economic diversification. And if everywhere has the same level of internet connectivity there will be smart villages and unsmart villages. It is the sophistication of use of internet by public private and voluntary agency that drive smartness not the ICT infrastructure’s existence.
We are fully aware that having a web browser and being able to use it to search for information and interact are two separate issues. That is why we signalize this problem in the article, providing data, among others, on the use of the internet by the elderly. However, the prerequisite is that this browser should be installed everywhere. Then it will be easier to learn how to use it. The order smart village --> access to the internet is not correct.
Line 113 “civilisational backwardness” grates with me as a phrase. Surely developmentally they are backward, and in GDP terms, but civilisationally? They could teach a few individualistic, money- grubbing urbanites a thing or two about civilisation!
Perhaps it is a too literal loanword from Polish. In Poland, this word refers to backwardness and modernity and has a historical connotation. It is about infrastructural backwardness and we changed this.
Line 163 migration normally used in singular
We applied this form throughout the text.
Line 165-6 Check out Eurostat and the demographics chapter: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/3217494/9210140/KS-HA-18-001-EN-N.pdf/655a00cc-6789-4b0c-9d6d-eda24d412188 it is not as simple as that. There are some quite rural areas with gains, not just suburban areas, especially in Sweden Denmark, UK, Germany and Western France.
True, there are also remote rural areas in Poland which are gaining population (geographical location advantages, e.g. tourism, natural resources, historical factor). However, we do not want to go into details, especially when talking about the whole of Europe. Hence, we have emphasized that it is the polarization trend that is dominant.
Line 234 migration is rather than migrations are
247 and 250 “provincial capitals” would read better
Line 385 local government normally used in singular
Agreed.
Line C 256 ff In many parts of Europe there has been a tradition of working away and then eventually returning home to set up a business. I first came across this in remote rural Portugal 15+ years ago where people who had worked building sites or very manual jobs in say Frankfurt would retire early and open a small business often a café or similar in their home village. And have remittances ever been properly investigated in these depopulating districts?
Such a phenomenon in Poland is called "people on a swing". For example, such research was undertaken in: http://cejsh.icm.edu.pl/cejsh/element/bwmeta1.element.desklight-83a9ab91-8f46-4b99-ad85-2547b31b9eae; https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=54547; https://link.springer.com/book/10.1057%2F978-1-137-59066-4
Line 416 ff I am a bit sceptical about this para linking smart villages and SD. Both are highly fluid concepts vulnerable to variable interpretation with all kinds of actions and activities justified under the umbrella heading of SV or SD.
These are trendy terms. Nevertheless, we see a certain danger of "smashing" these two concepts and blurring the difference between them, which we signal in the text.
Line 440 Why are private services left out? Places that have smart services (especially niche tourism) are often smart villages. This can extend to retailing (including of regional specialities). Public private or third sector actors can all operate smartly in some communities. It is never made clear in the paper how a better ICT infrastructure enhances public services. It could, e.g. by e-health, or by e-complaints about broken pavements or non-working street lights, but you never make it clear what the breakthrough in public services is from a better ICT infrastructure. (Sorry the table on the next page answers most of these questions)
The comment seems to be explained.
Line 500 and following para: my recently deceased father in law (he was 100 years old when he died) used the internet for all sorts of purchases. So, he never supported local shops, but instead used supermarket deliveries. Being e-smart may not be local smart.
This is particularly evident during the pandemic. Thank you very much for such an insightful review, which is also a guideline for our next research.
Author Response File: Author Response.doc
