10. Digital Platforms for (or Against?) Marginal Areas: Smart Working and Back-to-the-Village Rhetoric in Italy

Teleworking, home working, and remote working are usually used as synonyms of smart working, particularly in Italy where the latter is commonly used (in English language) to indicate every kind of job made outside the office. There are actually some differences: home working includes the same job organization as in the office, with scheduled starting and ending hours and all-round availability, with the obligation to indicate job location (usually home); remote working/teleworking also includes rules as in the office, however, without the obligation to communicate job location; and eventually smart working – or agile work – that includes an organization combining a time for private life and one for the work life based on a mutual trust and participation between the employers and the employees, who are able to organize their time according to goals, stages, and cycles, and not fixed rules, within a highly flexible frame in terms of hours and location (www.​digitaldictionar​y.​com). Felstead et al. (2001) defined home-based work as “an economic activity carried by members of households who produce within their place of residence commodities for exchange in the market” distinguishing between two categories: own-account producers, usually linked to a lifestyle decision to be independent and dependent workers who adopt telework in accordance to their companies to reduce costs and/or a better work/life balance”.

In Italian language, small town is usually indicated with the word “paese” that has a neutral connotation, while “borgo”, deriving from the latin “burgus”, traditionally indicates small walled villages rich in historic and cultural heritage. Over the last years, the word “borgo” has been increasingly used in mainstream narratives even with reference to not walled small towns to emphasize the positive connotation (Graziano 2021).

The main informational sources were newspapers and magazines (Repubblica, Corriere della Sera, Che-fare, Il Sole 24 ore, Il Digitale, Huffington Post, Internazionale, Linkiesta, and Abitare); press releases, manifestos, and interviews retrieved from architectures’ studios websites, professional associations (Stefano Boeri Architetti, Massimiliano Fuksas Architetti, Ordine degli Ingegneri, Ordine degli Architetti, and RiAgiTa Lab); environmentalist and civic associations (Legambiente and Bike Italia); institutional programs (Agenda Digitale Italiana, Smart Italy Goal, and “Bando Borghi PNRR”); corporations, high tech companies, and innovative startup; and cultural/counter-cultural and bottom-up associations websites/Facebook pages (MiRiconosci and Archinumi).

In the aftermath of the first lockdown, the company differentiated its market strategy. It launched a global scale program called “Live anywhere” that entails the selection of 12 “creative digital nomads” available to live for a year abroad in an Airbnb apartment, thus demonstrating an increasing interest in catching new segment markets combining “off-the-beaten-track destinations” with digital nomads’ lifestyles. Conversely, the company says to have registered an increase of 30% in booking in non-urban areas in Italy over the first 3 months of 2021. Based on a questionnaire distributed among 2000 employees in the country, the company says that 66% of the sample would like to live in a non-urban area as a temporary teleworker (https://​news.​airbnb.​com/​it/​smart-working-la-bellezza-fa-bene-al-lavoro/​). Furthermore, it launched two kinds of workation offers in Italy in 2021: one in collaboration with five national parks and the other with the Touring club, the association delivering the “bandiera arancione” (“orange flag”), a label that certifies environmental tourist quality for small towns within the wider frame of strategies oriented towards rural areas worldwide (https://​news.​airbnb.​com/​it/​slow-tourism-parchi-nazionali-e-antichi-tratturi/​; https://​news.​airbnb.​com/​it/​airbnb-e-touring-club-italiano-insieme-per-promozione-dei-borghi/​; https://​www.​airbnb.​it/​d/​ruralbootcamp)

I excluded the workation experiences available “on demand”.

https://​news.​airbnb.​com/​wp-content/​uploads/​sites/​4/​2017/​10/​Condividere_​Italia_​Rurale_​2017.​pdf)