Assessment of the modern practice of strategizing social and economic development of large cities

The aim of the study is to assess the modern Russian practice of strategizing social and economic development of large cities. Methods used for the research were content analysis of urban strategies developed in accordance with the requirements of Federal Law No. 172-FZ “On Strategic Planning in the Russian Federation”, followed by a logical and comparative analysis of methodological approaches to address key objectives of strategizing tested in practice. These tasks include: assessment of the achieved goals and the social and economic development potential of a large city, identification of its competitive advantages, justification of strategic goals and targets, definition of the appropriate amount of financial resources, selection of the strategy implementation mechanism. Object database of our study includes the cities of Voronezh, Kazan, Kaliningrad, Magnitogorsk, Novosibirsk, Penza, Rostov-on-Don, Tver, Tolyatti and Ulan-Ude. The analysis made it possible to identify several significant weaknesses inherent in the mass practice of strategic municipal planning. The first one is the inadequacy of the used methodological approaches to the complicated character of key tasks of municipal strategy development. The second one concerns the absence of clear, unambiguously interpreted requirements that define the required quality level for the results obtained in the solution of key tasks. The third one is a non-systematic planning process, manifested in weak coordination between the main components of the strategy (mission and strategic goals, strategic goals and objectives, strategic goals and management tools and financial resources that ensure their achievement). The fourth one is the limited number of participants when developing strategies, which significantly reduces the abilities to include the interests of different stakeholder groups. The main reasons for the presence of these weaknesses were determined. In order to improve the quality of strategic municipal planning it is necessary to focus the activities of public authorities on their elimination