The concept of smart development of local territorial units in rural areas of the peripheral region on the example of the Lublin Voivodeship

The aim of the article was to systematize the achievements in the field of theoretical foundations of the concept of smart development in relation to rural areas of the peripheral region and to attempt to measure the potential of smart development of rural and urban-rural communes. The empirical part of the work focuses on the use of the author's concept of measuring the potential of smart development to characterize the differentiation of the state of advancement of territorial units in the Lublin region and to identify potential centers of smart development, as well as to show the relationship between the type of functional structure of communes and the level of smart development. The study assumed that the concept of smart villages can be operationalized within the framework of the diagnosis of the following six dimensions: management, quality of life, economy, society, natural environment and mobility. The construction of a set of 24 diagnostic indicators characterizing the indicated dimensions was based on the resources of the Local Data Bank of the Central Statistical Office, data of the Office of Electronic Communications (UKE) and the Central Register of Vehicles and Drivers (CEPiK). In order to organize the studied territorial units in terms of smart village potential, the zero unitarization method was used. The research resulted in a ranking of 193 communes of the Lublin province, including 167 rural and 26 urban-rural. The research enabled positive verification of the hypothesis regarding the link between the level of smart development potential and the degree of advancement of the multifunctional development process of territorial units. It should be noted that apart from urban-rural communes, noticeable advancement in the potential for smart development was also achieved in rural communes with a diversified functional structure of local economies. Higher smart development potential was demonstrated by units with a multifunctional structure of the economy.