Content №4 от 2018
Structural Reforms of Municipal Space. Usefulness Justification and Efficiency Evaluation
The article discusses a set of science and application questions on the sense and foundations, content and consequences of the structural reforms of municipal space. They are of interest to the academic community due to the raised structural organization changeability that during the whole post-Soviet period didn’t just experience separate situational changes but repeatedly became an object of intensive and universal reorganizations purposefully implemented by the state (at the federal and regional levels) that had contradictory character of progressive-reflexive actions following a «reform - counter-reform» scheme. These conclusions can be made thanks to a retrospective analysis of massive transformations in local self-government territorial organization that took place in the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s. We explain the reasons for conducting three opposite by their essence and cardinal by their consequences quantitative-structural reorganizations during such a short period, what criterion requirements (economic, financial, legal, etc.) motivated the choice between rapidly alternating versions of spatial configuration and what the results of those changes turned out to be. Russian processes of spatial reforms in the system of local self-government are compared with similar foreign practices. The article explores the principal possibility and availability of theoretical foundations to formulate and solve the problem of rationally defining the spatial scales of municipalities (municipal space configuration), as well as elaborates on the conceptual approach, criteria and methodic basis to assess the premises and efficiency of the structural reforms of municipal space.
