This article critically explores the intersection of digital geographies, community building, tourism development, and bottom-up processes that shape resilient rural futures. While rural development initiatives often adopt urban-centric norms and technology-driven solutions, such approaches risk overlooking the lived realities and social fabric of rural communities. Digital representations of rural places frequently reinforce stereotypes, leaving these regions underrepresented and mischaracterised in media narratives. In the Smart Villages in Sweden project, we sought to counter this trend by integrating tourism and place design through participatory, place-based methods. Rather than assuming technology as a panacea, our approach foregrounded local knowledge, everyday practices, and grassroots engagement to co-create digital solutions that resonate with rural life. This participatory action research process enabled the identification of concepts that address local challenges and aspirations, fostering hope and vitality within communities. Our findings demonstrate that sensible digital development—anchored in sociality and local agency—can bridge spatial, social, and digital divides. By combining geomedia studies with tailored, community-driven design, digital tools become more than technical artefacts: They serve as catalysts for storytelling, value creation, and connection. Ultimately, technology must be embedded in the rhythms of rural life to strengthen social bonds, cohesion, and solidarity. We argue that sustainable rural futures depend not only on innovation but on approaches that respect and amplify the voices and practices of those who inhabit these places.

This chapter investigates how we can facilitate a sensitive digital and collaborative place design process to promote a more nuanced and sustainable development of digitalised experiences and services in harmony with a local place. The use of technology-driven experiences and place-specific digital services at destinations has expanded, especially within the tourism industry. These services may range from digital map functions, place-specific information, or narratives to augmented reality experiences and virtual representations. The common feature among these media technologies is that they, in different ways, reference a place, known as geomedia technologies, which connect media, local places, and local narratives. However, the development and implementation of these technologies tend to overlook spatial implications and lack critical reflection, failing to align with local conditions or highlight unique local assets. Consequently, tourism stakeholders and residents experience a loss of control over development and information, which favours generalised technical solutions and user-generated content from visitors. We therefore propose a collaborative and inclusive place design process that considers the relationship between people, place, and media technology concerning the present, the past, and the future. In this chapter, we present geomedia sensibility. These theoretical underpinnings frame sensitive digital place design and illustrate how to conduct a collaborative design process guided by geomedia sensibility through a specific design case. © 2026 selection and editorial matter, Fredrik Hoppstadius, Mekonnen Tesfahuney and Ulrika Åkerlund; individual chapters, the contributors.

A key starting point in designing a place is understanding and getting to know the place to create value. Understanding a place is a fascinating journey that weaves together history, the present and the future. This chapter intends to explore the process of understanding a place in more depth and explore the importance of both physical and socio-cultural aspects to create meaningful places. There are numerous ways of approaching a deeper understanding of places. This chapter aims to contribute with insights into a method of in-depth “place-interviewing”, which creates a framework for understanding different perspectives of a place. An important starting point is to discover what makes a place unique and to uncover new and exciting aspects. Place-based studies aim to identify these values and highlight local knowledge. It is also essential to adopt a reflective perspective where we emphasise whose stories and values are highlighted. Including different stakeholders in the process is key. This can be achieved through in-depth interviews with, for example, young, old, newcomers, long-term residents, representatives of associations, businesses and public actors. Interviewing a place in depth also means including visitors. We start with an in-depth study of a place to capture the representation of place and involve various stakeholders. The chapter ends with an analysis of a digital representation, and how the comparisons of different representations are valuable input to the creative process in the design process. This constitutes the first and second cycle in a process of three cycles. © 2026 selection and editorial matter, Fredrik Hoppstadius, Mekonnen Tesfahuney and Ulrika Åkerlund; individual chapters, the contributors.

This chapter examines the changing dynamics of rural areas in relation to the dominance of the “urban norm” in shaping rural development. It underscores how rural regions are no longer passive recipients of urban influence but active spaces of transformation, shaped by tourism, migration, digitalisation, and evolving work patterns. The boundaries between urban and rural, work and leisure, have become increasingly blurred, especially considering the COVID-19 pandemic and the rise of hybrid lifestyles. These changes have introduced new actors, skills, and expectations into rural communities, creating both opportunities and tensions. Tourism plays a vital role in this transformation, shaping how rural landscapes are imagined, planned, and utilised. However, despite its potential, the tourism industry is often excluded from strategic planning and community development. The chapter advocates for a place-based design approach that emphasises local needs, cultural heritage, and ecological sustainability. It calls for a re-evaluation of rural design, one that moves beyond urban-centric models and celebrates the distinct character and complexity of rural areas. Rural areas are not merely a backdrop for tourism but a living system that must be respected and integrated into design processes. By adopting regenerative principles and inclusive planning, rural areas can evolve into resilient, vibrant communities that serve both residents and visitors. The chapter advocates collaborative, context-sensitive design strategies that recognise the socio-cultural and ecological dimensions of rural, positioning tourism as a strategic partner in sustainable development. © 2026 selection and editorial matter, Fredrik Hoppstadius, Mekonnen Tesfahuney and Ulrika Åkerlund; individual chapters, the contributors.

This article explores a participatory and Geomedia-based approach to urban planning through the concept of place design. Place design as an approach emphasises the integration of collective knowledge, sociocultural values, and digital representation into planning processes. The integration of Geomedia studies further enriches this approach by examining how media technologies influence spatial experiences, representations, and power relations. By introducing place design as a transformative and participatory approach, physical, digital, and social dimensions of place bridge heritage and future aspirations. Through case studies from Kristinehamn, Sunne, and Sysslebäck in Sweden, the article examines methods for in-depth interviewing, capturing diverse representations. The article advocates for a participatory planning approach, establishing the groundwork for more democratic, inclusive, and context-aware development. It concludes by urging urban planners to adopt working methods that respond to the complexity of place, people and technology, promote new ways of thinking and working with design, and make a clear shift from planning for places to designing with people and places. 

Tourism digitalization is often understood and implemented in a technocratic sense and implicitly viewed as a solution to perceived shortages in tourism development. Despite this, little attention has been given to the fact that digital technology has spatial and social implications and is strongly intertwined with tourism places and various actors. We address this intending to identify the dominant disciplinary and contemporary research approaches to tourism digitalization through a systematic review of 2 480 publications from the Scopus database. With inspiration from geomedia studies, an explorative thematic analysis found a separation that poses a risk of technology development being detached from its actual context, suggesting that tourism scholars and practitioners would benefit from broadening their readings and critically addressing the interconnection between technology and tourism places. 

With the rapidly emerging development of technology-mediated tourism experiences and place-based digital services for visitors, there is a lack of awareness regarding the spatial implications of technological implementations. Based on a participatory action research method applied in this study on five research-based destination development projects in Sweden, we propose a spatially sensible approach when developing enhanced experiences for visitors through digital technology. This paper is motivated by the emerging criticism of how media technology is shaping and reshaping spaces. Drawing on the theoretical underpinnings of the growing field of geomedia studies, we propose “geomedia sensibility” as a way to offer a sensible approach in the co-creation of digital experiences at destinations.

This article draws on five participatory action research studies to address how geomedia theory can induce multiple imaginations of the future. Critical future research advocates that societies need to collectively create visions of multiple futures, transcending the single rational (neoliberal) future path. The studies were conducted in collaboration with rural communities and local tourism entrepreneurs who were exploring geomedia technologies to develop destinations. The tourism sector uses geomedia technologies but often depends on commercial platforms that seek upscaling and generalisation, becoming detached from local practices and place-specific settings. By applying critical geomedia studies, we problematised the relationship between people, place, and technology in the present, the past, and the future. Geomedia studies provided a critical lens that provoked future visions beyond preformatted technological infrastructures and media practices. The participants were asked to engage with complex issues such as access, restrictions, equality, authority, and legitimacy in relation to the specific place, bringing forth a multitude of local assets and narratives envisioning alternative geomedia technologies. As a result of this process, participants paid greater attention to local assets, gained a more critical approach towards technology, and dared to use digital solutions in a more visionary manner. We, therefore, argue that researchers need to engage with society to bypass hegemonic geomedia representations. By illustrating how geomedia theory can be utilised within community development, we provide a framework for how collaborative research can more explicitly engage with local actors’ thoughts and imaginings of possible futures.

This special issue of Culture Unbound directs attention beyond cities, to small towns and rural communities, and the practices taking place there. Referring to a previous special issue on ‘Rural Media Spaces’ from 2010, this special issue revisits the notion of ‘the rural’ versus ‘the urban’ through the concept of placemaking and geomedia. In a mediatized society, placemaking practices cannot be understood without simultaneously understanding different media practices and how they affect place. A geomedia perspective on placemaking beyond cities, therefore, brings new perspectives on media representations of small towns and rural communities, related to the materialization of space and how we engage with and perceive the world. Geomedia also includes a focus on layers of digitalization and new media in the relations between place and practice.

The issue brings together researchers from a wide range of subjects, and the articles in this volume address empirical examples from different rural places and small towns in Sweden and internationally. Taken together, a manifold of issues relating to media and placemaking beyond cities are covered, for example, inclusion/exclusion, representation, resistance, community building, belonging, and identification.

The role of religion in Western societies has gained renewed attention in recent years. While choirs have been studied to varying extents in the social sciences, the geography of choirs has received little attention, particularly in human geography. Using questionnaire responses from secular choir members, this exploratory study examines the possible differences and/or similarities of secular choir’s sacral and/or secular activity in urban and rural spaces in Sweden. The study reveals two primary findings. First, it reveals that secular choir members engage in a mixture of secular and sacred activities, suggesting that these activities can be considered postsecular. Second, the data challenges the geographical perception of rural environments as more sacred/traditional, as they have a high proportion of secular activities. Likewise, the results questions the geographical perception of urban environments as secular/modern, as they demonstrate an even distribution of sacred activities.