Essential and substantive features of balanced spatial development of rural areas: national and global aspects

Abstract

The article examines theoretical and conceptual approaches to understanding the balanced spatial development of rural areas in the context of transformational economic processes in the agricultural sector of Ukraine and global environmental challenges. The purpose of the study is to further form a systematic view of balanced sustainable development of rural areas with an emphasis on the specifics of agrarian natural resource management. The essence of the economic space of rural areas is revealed through the peculiarities of balanced agricultural management, as well as the use of natural resource potential, in particular, land and resource potential. A system of socio-ecological, economic and institutional directions of management of a conceptual nature has been formed in order to intensify the balanced and continuous transformation of the economic space of rural areas. The developed conceptual directions are a prerequisite for ensuring the economisation and ecologisation of the territorial-spatial organisation of the rational use and reproduction of agricultural potential (in particular, land and resource, natural resource). Particular attention is paid to the issues of determining the structural and functional construction of the space of rural areas on the basis of balanced agricultural management. The proposed structuring of the economic space of agriculture by various criteria is a generalised characteristic of the balanced spatial development of rural areas. The characteristics by means of which the economic space of rural areas receives its qualitative definition (capacity, saturation, density, development, connectivity, tension) are given.