Spatial and territorial development of the European North: trends and priorities of transformation

One of the key goals in the development of Russia, the largest country in the world, is the necessity to provide optimal and efficient usage of its huge territories. However, transformational market changes, which happened after the collapse of the USSR in the 1990s, led to a sharp decrease in the state's role in the governance of spatial development. This policy had extremely negative economic and social implications: settlement contrast increased due to the production and population's retraction into areas of concentration. Simultaneous “washing” of population out from deep regions also took place. At the same time, these problems are especially relevant for Russia's northern territories, which are characterized by focal settlement, production's placement, and for other territories, which experienced negative consequences of market transition. These factors justify the relevance of this research. The goal of the paper is to study the features and substantiate priority areas of perfecting governance of Russian European North (REN) regions' spatial territorial development. Theoretical and methodological approaches toward understanding the essence of economic space and its development, the analysis of key trends and specifics of Russian European North's spatial development in the post-soviet period were studied. Also, we prove that economic space of REN is currently linear-nodular with significant areas of economic periphery. The article shows the role of first- and second-class nods in preserving supporting carcass of territories of Russian European North. Also, it is shown that such settlement systems might be a basis for formation and development of polycentric model of region's space organization. This model is aimed at the revival and development of sustainable socio-economic and technological connections through the system “large city-small town-village”.