On 18th January 2023, three reports co-authored by the International Centre for Local and Regional Development (ICLRD) were launched by the Southern Regional Assembly (SRA) as part of its journey to becoming a ‘Smart Southern Region’.
Commissioned in Summer 2021 and concluded in Summer 2022, the reports prepared by a team from Maynooth University and the ICLRD feed into the work programmes of the SRA as they relate to delivery of its Regional Spatial and Economic Strategy (RSES) and its current INTERREG Europe funded programme, COHES3ION.
There is a growing recognition that every type of region is facing industrial transition – as a result of changes to traditional manufacturing, climate change and, more recently, COVID-19 and its impact on retail trends – and thus have distinct needs. Within the Regional Spatial and Economic Strategy of the Southern Regional Assembly (SRA), Section 6.1 commits to the development of a network of smart cities and a smart region. While there is no unique definition of a smart region, smart regions as a concept play a key role in developing new growth dynamics, based on bottom-up entrepreneurship and innovation. Increasingly, such regions are a mechanism for examining the spatial interlinkages between urban and rural areas and demonstrating their capacity to transform societies in priority areas such as energy transition, digital growth, circular economy, agro-food and industrial modernisation.
In this series of three reports, the Maynooth University and ICLRD team, through a process of wide stakeholder engagement and co-design, have developed a working definition of a Smart Southern Region, drawn on international good practice to guide how the SRA could take forward the concept of a Smart Southern Region, and developed a maturity framework around how this can be advanced in the short to medium term. This work was complimented by an associated piece of research into smart specialisation in the Southern Region, undertaken by Bable in 2021. The research reports can be downloaded below.
