The Phenomenon of Unevenness of Socio-Economic Development of Cities and Districts in the Murmansk Oblast: Specifics, Trends, Forecast, Regulation

• Published in: Economic and social changes: facts, trends, forecast / Экономические и социальные перемены: факты, тенденции, прогноз
• Main Authors: Skufina Tatiana P., Baranov Sergey V.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English; Russian
• Published: Russian Academy of Sciences, Vologda Research Center 2017
• Subjects: socio-economic development; murmansk oblast; differentiation; cities; districts; Sociology (General); HM401-1281; Murmansk; Murmansk Oblast
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.15838/esc.2017.5.53.5; https://doaj.org/article/c6125012fdbd4c639e5a90790b711fe1

The article studies the transformation and regulation of the phenomenon of unevenness of socio-economic space. We provide detailed comments on a fundamental nature of the unevenness of development of socio-economic space in any territorial entity (region, country, district, etc.) and point out the importance of research on the unevenness of development from the standpoint of science and management. We substantiate a priority approach to the study of unevenness; in the framework of this approach we move consistently from quantitative assessment of the phenomenon of unevenness of space through identification of specifics and patterns to forecasting and practical recommendations for management. All this is related to the prospects of further research. We present the importance and relevance of this study, which aims to identify specifics of the phenomenon of unevenness of socio-economic development of cities and districts of the Murmansk Oblast, and to forecast its dynamics and regulation in present-day crisis conditions. The paper presents a comprehensive vision for methodological support of research on the differentiation of socio-economic space; it also substantiates the authors’ own version of methodological tools to assess the phenomenon of differentiation of socio-economic development in cities and districts of the region. Having tested the proposed techniques that help assess differentiation, we consider comparative dynamics of cities and districts of the Murmansk Oblast: we rank the objects by level of socio-economic development and identify trends and patterns in the development of the phenomenon. We make a forecast of how the crisis can impact the development of differentiation between cities and districts of the Murmansk Oblast according to two scenarios: the basic scenario assumes that most social indicators will either remain stable or experience slight differentiation, and a further slight increase is expected in the differentiation of economic indicators. The target scenario assumes a similar ...