Spatial typology of municipalities in the context of the local government system transformation

The next stage of local government reform, which began with the adoption of Federal Law 33, dated March 20, 2025 “On the general principles of organizing local government in a unified system of public authority”, has the effect of transforming the existing system of municipal and territorial structure of Russian regions. The constant change in the number and types of municipalities leads to their instability as an object of the research, negatively affecting the reliability of conclusions in the study of socio-economic development. The article is aimed at forming a spatial typology of municipalities, which, on the one hand, would allow taking into account their chronotopic nature, and on the other hand, ensuring stable identification as an object of the research. Methodologically the work was based on the provisions of the spatio-temporal approach. The paper proves that the typology of municipalities can be based on the parameters of economic space – concentration, connectivity, and location. Quantitative and qualitative criteria are for concentration – population density and the share of rural population, for connectivity – inclusion in the agglomeration, for location – the presence on the territory of an object included in the Register of the objects of accumulated environmental damage. The developed typology has been tested on the example of the Sverdlovsk Region municipalities. According to the results of the approbation, the dominance of municipalities with a centripetal nature of industrial relations in the territorial and municipal division of the region was revealed. The expediency of classifying them as centripetal has been determined despite the fact that some of them have a population density corresponding to the centrifugal nature of industrial relations in the territory. The scientific significance of the work is related to the possibility of using the proposed typology to determine the risks of municipal development, as well as to assess trends, individual characteristics and results of socio-economic development of municipalities, including their economic well-being, which will allow formulating and implementing appropriate regional policy measures.