Methodological recommendations on selection of scenarios for the development of single-industry towns

The article is devoted to the issues of Russian single-industry towns, the territory of which is home to 13.5 million people; city-forming enterprises produce 7.1 trillion rubles a year. The relevance of the study identifies several socio-economic problems of single-industry towns (dependence of local and family budgets on the financial condition of city-forming enterprises, rising unemployment in the crisis), requiring a comprehensive scientific solution. The goal is to develop a methodology for determining the scenario of development of single-industry towns and test it on the single-industry towns of the Central Federal District. To achieve this goal, the following tasks were implemented: acceptable scenarios for the development of single-industry towns were determined: changing outdated industry for strategic industry, economic diversification, development of tourist-recreational zones, resettlement of single-industry towns; a system of criteria for selecting scenarios for the further development of single-industry towns was formed; scenarios for further development of single-industry towns in the Central Federal District were developed. The author's method of selecting scenarios for the development of single-industry towns based on applying advanced methodological tools (methods for assessing the degree of non-diversification of a territory, assessing the competitiveness and potential of single-industry towns), and also the results of analyzing financial stability of city-forming enterprises in these territories. The article uses official statistical information. It is revealed that a high level of competitiveness, the average degree of non-diversification and stable financial condition of core enterprises in single-industry towns with the main sector of metallurgy (towns of Gubkin, and Zheleznogorsk) do not require additional measures to improve socio-economic efficiency. For the three single-industry towns (towns of Rossosh, Kotovsk, Klintsy) the author identified the scenario of further development - diversification of the economy; for ten single-industry towns (towns of Seltso, Kameshkovo, Kolchugino, Galich, Mtsensk, Skopin, Aleksin, Vyazniki, Yuzha, Gavrilov-Yam) - change of an outdated industry strategy. Development scenarios implying the creation of tourist and recreational zone (no tourism potential) and the resettlement of single-industry towns were not used in this sample. The practical significance of the results obtained consists in the possibility of their use in the activities of regional and municipal authorities in developing programs for socio-economic development of various single-industry towns.