Understanding smart territories: A conceptual framework

Digital transformation advancements lead to rapid urban development and provoke the dynamic scientific and managerial discourse on smart cities (SCs). In recent years, this scholarly debate has been corroborated by novel emerging concepts such as smart towns, villages, islands, territories, etc. These places may significantly favor from the deployment of smart approaches in their territories. The present systematic literature review (SLR) approach may become a first step to studying the smart territories (ST) concept in its broad understanding as it is introduced in the scientific discourse. Since the STs' characteristics are still indistinct and depend on the research context, the authors of the present research explore the extensive body of scientific literature where STs are discussed with no limitation by the year of publication or geography. Overall, 1470 related scholarly studies were identified in the literature corpus, and 57 of them were thoroughly studied. The present study is aimed at deepening the existing knowledge on STs and providing a new definition of the phenomenon under consideration, its dimensions, and a conceptual framework based on the evidence gathered from the SLR on the topic. The results of the research may contribute to the development and implementation of smart approaches across various territories.