The Industrialization Project for Integrated Smart Rural Development
No.: PR1824
Author: Lee, Yung-Jaan
Price: Not for Sale
Publication: 2017.02
Abstract:
In the past, development in Taiwan relied on the agricultural sector. However, due to urbanization and industrialization, the urban-rural landscape and the industrial structure have been dramatically changed, which has caused gradual transformation of self-sustained agricultural development and agricultural products and further causing brain drain, limitation of agricultural management and homogenization of agricultural products. Following the movement of global information industry, the smart application and industries have gradually integrated, resulting in numerous developments of smart cities. Most of Taiwan’s rural areas still depend on traditional industries and rural living styles and patterns. Therefore, the Council of Agriculture, Executive Yuan bases on the Rural Rejuvenation Act to actively promote rural rejuvenation plans. In enforcing “vitalization of agricultural industries”, the Council of Agriculture designates the Soil and Water Conservation Bureau to actively collaborate with relevant authorities to implement “Cross-boundary Collaboration for Rural Rejuvenation to Integrate Industrial Development Demonstration Plan.” Following the approval of the Executive Yuan to implement “Sustainable Smart Cities: Implementation of the Smart Green Architecture and Communities,” the smart applications have gradually evolved to the smaller units of communities and neighborhoods. To rural communities, promoting the smart application is the best solution to reduce urban-rural discrepancy and to avoid urban expansion. This project is based on the Rural Rejuvenation Act to assist the comprehensive development of rural communities and to help rural communities to develop smart communities. This project integrates sound transportation, information and communication technology, livelihood and basic modern rural construction with advanced agricultural techniques to promote the development of smart rural communities, in the hope to solve the development bottleneck of modernization of rural areas and to achieve sustainable development. This project mainly uses research approaches of policy studies and case studies. From the perspective of social entrepreneurship, this project develops a comprehensive structure of implementation of smart rural communities, industrial development paths and industrial platform. Furthermore, this project adopts selection criteria and selects Nei-Cheng Community, Yilan and Shan-An Community, Nantou as the demonstration rural communities. Using field-trip investigations, workshops, in-depth interviews and numerous consultations with potential industries, this project adopts smart transportation arrangement and smart watch in NeiCheng Community. Moreover, solar panel roofing and integration of disaster prevention information website were applied in Shan-An Community. It is suggested that in promoting smart industrial development for rural communities, community empowerment and community industrial independency must be prioritized. Moreover, in implementing smart communities, due to the expensive equipments of relevant information technologies, there are needs to expand the implementation of smart rural communities in case of the incapability of the public sectors. Therefore, the project suggests the following two propositions for future implementation of smart rural communities.
1. Implementation plans for smart rural communities should emphasize community empowerment and participation to reduce the risk and cost of negotiations. Furthermore, the management scale should be expanded to increase the incentives for potential industries and further to speed up the implementation of smart rural communities.
2. The integrated development process for rural communities should emphasize education and training of community information personnel and independency of community industrial development. Furthermore, social entrepreneurship in the communities should be established to increase incomes for community operation and to increase the incentives for implementing smart developments.
Moreover, sharing of the outcomes of successful management can increase the consensus for communities to accept the integration of new technologies and rural communities.