Assessing the socio-economic potential of rural territories

Currently, the relevance of the research of trends and potential for rural territory development is primarily caused by increased attention of scientists and public authorities to spatial topics. In 2019, the Spatial Development Strategy of the Russian Federation for the period up to 2025 and the new State Program of the Russian Federation “Integrated Rural Development” were adopted. In this regard, the article’s aim is to develop a methodological approach to assessing the socio-economic potential of rural territories and, based on its approbation, to determine priority areas for ensuring their integrated and sustainable development. To achieve this goal, the authors use such scientific methods as economic,statistical, and comparative analysis, methods of generalization, analysis, synthesis, as well as the monographic method. The scientific novelty of the research is the proposed method of socio-economic potential measurement (with scoring) of rural territories. This method makes it possible to classify them by the level of potential development to justify the priorities of regional and local socio-economic policies for different types of territories. The authors have drawn the following conclusions: key development problems of rural territories of Russia, and Russian North in particular, are unfavorable demographic conditions; a low level of accomplished housing with all kinds of amenities (the national average is that only a third of the Fund is improved); a high share of population (for example, 40% of the Nenets Autonomous Okrug, and 45% of the Vologda Oblast) that is provided with poor-quality drinking water; a noticeable lag of rural population’s income in comparison with urban citizens’ incomes. Moreover, most municipal districts of the Vologda Oblast (14 out of 26) are characterized by the average potential level of their rural territories. The materials of the article can be used by the authorities and serve as a basis for further scientific research on this topic.