The article considers the problem of organization of Russia’s economic space in terms of the scale of existing municipalities. We established that there is a global problem in the course of the study of the reporting statistics – the country has been experiencing a gradual decline in the population of small municipalities for the previous 20 years. To eliminate this problem, a large-scale campaign has been launched to develop and update development strategies for small municipalities, which this article defines them as municipalities with a population of up to 50,000. The experience shows that these documents often have a discrepancy between the strategic objectives of the authorities and the current needs of the population. To eliminate this contradiction, we propose a simple analytical algorithm based on questionnaire surveys of settlements’ residents, calculation of the index of satisfaction with various aspects of life, and use the rule of selecting problem areas to obtain the necessary information at the early stages of developing municipal strategies. Approbation of the proposed analytical procedure for Tazovsky District of the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Area has provided meaningful results and gives grounds to believe that its replication for the Far North municipalities can be rather effective. We discuss the question of extending the methodology to other small municipalities in the country with specific climatic and geographical conditions
Keywords
Pressure points, urban settlements, small towns, development, rural settlements, strategy