Sociocultural aspects of spatial development

Abstract

Spatial development is one of the factors in the formation of society, and the policy of conscious spatial development is the most important component of transitions to new technological and sociocultural ways of life. The article deals with the problem of theoretical understanding of spatial development, as well as the author’s concept of its study and approach to the formation of relevant policies. The author proposes distinguishing between “developed” societies, capable of purposefully shaping their own space, and “undeveloped” ones, capable only of adapting to spontaneous changes in their own space. In the political sense, the task of spatial development is to form, through a complex impact on society, stable systemic integral formations of joint life activity. The article highlights two strategies for spatial development — revolutionary and evolutionary. Along with them, the author proposes using the concept of the cultural diversity of society as a tool for analyzing sociocultural environments. According to the author’s approach, it is necessary to study the sociocultural environment in a particular territory as a unique composition of social practices, historically self-reproducing on the basis of typological cultural patterns — traditional, modern, and communicative. The author comes to the conclusion that spatial development strategies focused only on one cultural pattern lead to the fact that part of the population starts to perceive the policy of implementing spatial development programs as alien to them, and this creates additional tension in the processes of transformation of societies. Therefore, in the process of deploying spatial development projects, along with economic studies on the characteristics of social space, it is necessary to conduct studies of the cultural patterns that are inherent in the people who form it. The author believes that the harmonization of social practices that are formed on the basis of and within the framework of various cultural patterns is one of the tasks of the policy of spatial development and a factor in the sustainability of society. Therefore, cultural policy should imply comprehensive support for the development of all cultural patterns on the basis of a dialogue of cultures. Regulators from different modes of life provide social communication and exchange on the scale of familial, tribal, communal integrity, as well as on the scale of nation-state and global communities. Therefore, their support is necessary for the reproduction of society in present-day conditions.