Coherence of economic space in Russia's municipal districts: measurement and tools for improvement

The development of economic and spatial formations of various types is closely linked with changes in the parameters of the economic space. The study is aimed at examining the parameter of coherence of the Russian municipal districts' economic space and searching for tools of its improvement in the context of the impact on the efficiency of economic activities. To assess the coherence of economic space of municipal districts, it is necessary to regard them as rural municipalities and draw upon the infrastructure indicators of municipal statistics that reflect the development of the road and railway network, postal and telephone communication. Time series analysis of these indicators allows to identify the directions of the local government body effort to increase the coherence of economic space in municipal districts. The proposed approach to the assessment of coherence was tested considering the example of the municipal districts of the Chelyabinsk Region. The results of the study show that there is a relatively good situation with the quality of the pavement in the municipal districts. However, regular bus and railway services are not accessible for more than 0.8% of the population of the region, which is considered to be a negative indicator of economic space coherence in terms of high dispersion ability of rural settlements. Besides, there is a certain unevenness in the postal and telephone services coverage. Based on the analysis of the rural municipalities of some European countries, it was concluded that the synthesis of flexible transport solutions and digitalization projects should be the tool for the improvement of coherence. Flexible transport solutions help to improve the coherence by using the existing infrastructure efficiently. Digitalization projects help to do so thanks to reducing the expenses on the transportation of goods (by means of scaling the demand for the transport infrastructure), the information exchange expenses (including spatial planning of the territory of a municipal district) and the expenses of provision of municipal and commercial services in the field of education, health care, and involvement of new economic agents.