Municipal Districts in Economic Space of a Region: Constructive and Destructive Trends

The research aims to design a method for identifying trends in municipal districts’ economic development in economic space of Russian regions. Municipal districts are a type of rural municipalities in Russia, therefore methodologically the paper relies on the theoretical propositions of both spatial and rural economics. The authors systematise Russian scholars’ approaches to the analysis of the municipalities’ socioeconomic development and based on this suggest their method for identifying constructive and destructive trends in economic development of municipal districts. The method encompasses four stages: assessment of scales of municipal districts’ presence in economic space of a region, assessment of municipal districts’ own economic dynamics, generalisation of these assessments and final identification of type of trends with the ultimate conclusions about municipal districts’ impact on the economic space of a region. The authors test the method at the example of Sverdlovsk oblast. According to the research findings, four out of five municipal districts in the oblast develop constructively. The only municipal district that has a destructive effect on economic space of the region is Slobodo-Turinsky municipal district. At this, the authors consider a trend constructive if it contributes to the development of economic space of a region, and destructive if it leads to its destruction. Theoretical and practical significance of the work is that the designed method allows not just assessing the economic dynamics of municipal districts but also linking it to the regional spatial economic development.