Theoretical and methodological approaches to assessing the quality of regional economic space

Abstract

Today, the problems of spatial development of territories require new thinking, as they still remain unresolved in Russia. The problems are inefficient regional economic structure, enormous internal contrasts and disparities, population decline and economic marginalisation of peripheral areas of the country, and a shrinking zone of political and economic influence on the world stage. Importantly, there is a growing threat to the integrity of the space due to the intensified internal socio-economic disparities of the country in the course of the current political and economic trends. Emerging territorial disparities, determined by the value of deviations from the average values of regional development, are the main problem of sustainable spatial development of territories. For the decision of problems of spatial-territorial development of innovation system of region it is necessary to realize estimation of quality of economic space on the basis of different indexes. These indicators can include territorial ones, used as tools to assess the innovation subsystem of the regional economy, as well as various approaches to the analysis of spatial factors considered in assessing the types of economic space in the region. The analysis of existing approaches to the assessment of the quality of economic space has shown that to date there is no universal approach. This fact confirms the statement that the study of such category as economic space, assessing its quality is a complex and multitask process.