The role of local communities in achieving sustainable development

The world's current idea is sustainable territorial development with economic, social and ecological alignment determined by the vertical integration of all management levels and the synergy of global, national, regional and local policies generated to secure this development. The purpose of this research was to review the role of local communities in achieving sustainable territorial development. Its methods included general scientific methods of obtaining knowledge about economic phenomena and institutional analysis methods. The research justified the essential role of local communities in achieving sustainable territorial development. These are social systems that have territorial compactness, sufficient resources and public needs, social self-identification, reproducibility and availability of self-government elements. The backbone elements of the local communities include their population, area, social interaction, as well as local self-government determining a municipal policy based on the resources available in the local community. The vehicles that help to achieve sustainable territorial development include local agenda such as long-term territorial sustainable development strategies based on the principles of economic, environmental and social sustainability which formation and implementation is hugely impacted by federal and regional social and economic policy priorities and business activities.