Dear all,
Please find below the call for papers to our session about smart
transformation and regional inequalities.
2025 Regional Studies Association's Annual Conference: Navigating Regional
Transformation
Porto, Portugal, May 6-9, 2025
Abstract submission deadline: 19th December 2024
LINK for abstract submission:
2025 RSA Annual Conference Special Sessions
Session title: Smart transformation and regional inequalities countering
digital exclusion of rural areas, small towns and peripheral regions
Session organisers:
Kadri Leetmaa, University of Tartu, Estonia
Bianka Plschke-Altof, University of Tartu, Estonia
Bradley Loewen, NTNU, Norway
Ingmar Pastak, University of Tartu, Estonia
Digital transformation has fundamentally changed the way society functions.
Digital life is no longer just a means of communication, but instead,
digital has become natural, making it hard to distinguish digital
transactions from our general presence in society.
At the same time, todays rural smartification pathways rather apply upon
the same powerlines of inequality already known - that access to the
benefits of digital transition is unequal, e.g. digital services are more
readily available in urban areas and used by younger, digitally affluent
people. This draws attention to the other side of the coin: aging rural
populations facing an increasing rate of digitalisation in services; the need
for digital skills in the labour market; the lack of digital innovation from
rural margins; and missing services designed in and for rural contexts. Such
digital divides are caused by gaps in digital infrastructure, lack of digital
skills, and different preferences, but also by the fact that there is a lack
of understanding of what a digital society outside major centres fundamentally
is.
There is a growing body of work by scholars who are inspired to look into
rural areas, small towns and peripheral regions and tilt the gravity of
smart from urban to rural context. These studies touch on the potential for
digitalization to enhance well-being and to include otherwise excluded groups
such as rural elderly, minorities, people with special needs, by analysing
services in shrinking rural areas and looking at many other critically
important issues.
Inspired by the recent smartification trend and growing literature from rural
context, this session aims to present the empirical and theoretical accounts
in discovering:
the interrelations between smart development and rural areas,
critical reflections on smart city and smart rurality concepts,
new interpretations of smart, development and innovation
state and local government induced smart development,
best practices of smart and digital,
and the influence of smart transformation on rural communities.
Bradley Loewen, PhD
Onsager Fellow (Associate Professor) in STS and sustainability transitions
Department of Interdisciplinary Studies of Culture (KULT)
Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)
NO-7491 Trondheim, Norway |
bradley.loewen@ntnu.no |
http://www.ntnu.edu/employees/bradley.loewen
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