Spatial and temporal patterns of development of territorial communities: possible scenario of change

Time and space are the prerequisites for the existence of a territorial community, since all the events that take place in a certain locality, show cause-and-effect relationships that form history, traditions, and patterns of life. Urban and country residents participate in the production, consumption, reproduction and capitalization of a territory’s social resources; the latter arise through social interactions, social ties, relations, motives, objectives and means of their achievement that are played out over a long time on a certain territory. Social changes affected by such factors as social resource availability determine the spatial and temporal patterns of development. The development patterns of a region are influenced by “liquid modernity”, situational and spontaneous actions of actors, suddenness and eventfulness, uncertainty and variability that are essential characteristics of social resources. Considering a region as a space-time continuum, the authors suggest that the territorial communities of urban and country residents constitute an established and changing system of social ties and interactions, with models of territorial socio-economic behavior, trust in institutional / non- institutional actors and other social resources. The spatial and temporal patterns of development are also affected by objective factors like economy crises, epidemics, wars, and the domestic and global politics. Given the evening-out of spatial difference in countries and regions, towns and settlements, glocalization is characterized by retaining local specifics related to the history, tradition, image of the territory, which we also classify as social resources. Subjective indicators are associated with understanding a region as a social space for interaction between people, groups, communities where social ties and interdependencies are formed, and ideas and meanings appear. In current conditions of nonlinear change, subjective factors can define the vector of development: people’s motivation for present and future self-realization on the given territory, trust, regional identity, solidarity with fellow countrymen. Based on the findings of a complex empirical sociological study the authors worked out the composite index of social resource availability that unites all the factors mentioned. Fluctuations of the index of social resource availability determine the spatial and temporal patterns of development of territorial communities and regions.