ASSESSMENT OF THE UNEVEN ECONOMIC SPACE OF THE CHELYABINSK REGION

The author assesses the unevenness of the space of the Chelyabinsk region in terms of the density of the population, employees of organizations, investments in fixed assets, the volume of shipped goods and services of own production and retail turnover. The sample of the study is forty municipalities of the Chelyabinsk region. These are 26 municipal districts, 13 urban districts and 1 municipal district. The source of the initial data is the database of Rosstat municipalities. Three municipal territories (Snezhinsky, Ozyorsky and Trekhgorny urban districts) are excluded from the sample. The author excluded these municipalities due to insufficient data for the study period, which was five years (from 2019 to 2023). The author used the Gini coefficient, calculated using the Brown formula. The author showed a high level of space heterogeneity across all five density measures. The highest level of unevenness is characteristic of the density of production, trade and investment resources. The values of the Gini coefficient obtained from these three indicators vary in the range of 0.888-0.929. The density of the population and labor resources is characterized by a slightly lower level of unevenness: from 0.755 to 0.790. The dynamics of the last five years has shown a steady increase in the unevenness of the economic space of the region in terms of population density and labor resources.