STRATEGIC GUIDELINES FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIAL INFRASTRUCTURE IN THE ECONOMIC SPACE OF RURAL AREAS

Currently, social infrastructure plays a key role in the development of rural areas, ensuring their spatial organization and integrity, as well as the quality of life of the population. Modern challenges, such as digitalization and institutional transformation, require a review of approaches to strategic planning and coordination of actions at various levels of government. For this, a methodology for assessing the integral level of development of the social infrastructure of rural areas of the Lipetsk region by type of periphery (near, medium, far) was proposed and tested, the results of which became the basis for determining the correlation between them and the level of agricultural development. Based on the data obtained, it has been proven that in rural areas of the near periphery, the agricultural industry practically does not affect the formation of social infrastructure, in the middle — a high direct dependence, and for the far — a noticeable reverse. The identified specifics of each type of rural areas, as well as the analysis of the strategic documents of the municipalities of the region, made it possible to develop a scenario forecast (inertial, basic, optimistic) of the development of rural areas in the context of each type of periphery. This approach can be taken into account for the development of measures to improve rural social policy.