Smart small villages conceptualization based on the capabilities co-elevation for smart citizens

Abstract

Smart Cities represent a new paradigm, a new smart and sustainable urban model that is empowered by increasingly sophisticated technologies applied in various sectors of city ecosystem to enable actors to co-create value. The main actors to be engaged in this transformation process are the citizens who in turn can represent multiple actors simultaneously within the urban environment and are actively involved in economic, social and political life. For this reason, this conceptual paper aims to point out the effective smart city patterns enabling factors. This topic can be very issued in small towns where there are numerous structural, cultural and demographical barriers that inhibit their use from every day-life to urban settings of an increasingly digitized Public Administration. After framing cities as smart service systems and given the issues regarding the citizens’ predisposition and ability to use technologies, with effects in terms of value co-creation, smart citizens and capabilities co-elevation have been outlined as drivers. An illustrative case involving a smart tourism app (PayTourist) in a small town in Southern Italy (Castellabate) is proposed to outline the factors that influence the technology acceptance by citizens and the ways to foster a capabilities co-elevation path. It would be appropriate for scholars and practitioners to adopt the service innovation roadmap to design and map the development of smart cities through the capabilities upskilling of actors involved.