ABSTRACT
This capacity requires institutional and infrastructural preconditions. The institutional structure should be able to stimulate and support the reconversion and the reorganization of economic activities by leveraging the complementarities between institutional sub-systems at the regional level. This institutional requirement enables smart communities to create an atmosphere of mutual trust, to address conflicts and to attract resources commitment (Rodrıguez-Pose and Storper, 2006). In fact, the concept of smart community incorporates the adherence to institutional models based on a non-formal bottom-up approach that favour a locally embedded interaction between communities and institutional agents (Farole et al., 2011). On the other hand, the preconditions for smart development concern both material and immaterial infrastructures. The former include ICT networks, while the latter include knowledge infrastructures aimed at generating and disseminating knowledge across the regional economic system. The existence of these preconditions implies that, in their absence, smart development policies should be preceded by the recovery and modernization of the existing endowment of infrastructures.
