It is revealed that at the present stage of Ukraine's development special attention should be paid to local communities with centers in small towns, which, despite of their formation of socio-economic framework for almost every region, are rather weak socially and economically territorial units. The current situation is primarily due to less favorable economic conditions for local communities with centers in small towns, in particular, because of the limited range of industries represented in them, insufficient financial resources to increase their competitiveness and so on. These local communities play an important role in the integration of urban and rural environment in management, production, transport and socio-infrastructural relations. Insufficient attention to the problems of local communities’ development centered in small towns can aggravate the imbalance in territorial development. Such local communities have become suppliers of the most active and qualified personnel for large cities and agglomerations. The decrease in the number of inhabitants of small towns, the outflow of young people, the increase in the number of people of retirement age lead to the stagnation of the respective local communities and their possible degradation.
The purpose of the dissertation research is to determine the theoretical foundations and features of management of local communities centered in a small town within a decentralized environment and to develop the approaches to integrated management of their development. According to the specified purpose in the dissertation the following scientific tasks are set and solved:
- to analyze the features of small towns as objects of governance, problems and trends in their development in the regional, national, global dimensions;
- to analyze the state policy on small towns as a component of the state regional policy and the policy of decentralization;
- to consider the peculiarities of the development of decentralization processes at the level of small towns, including the effectiveness of sectoral policies;
- to determine the ways of integrated development of small towns of Ukraine and features of glocalization as the main vector of their development;
- to work out a strategy for the development of a small town on the basis of marketing management of tourist and recreational activities;
- to develop recommendations for strengthening the effectiveness of public policy aimed at the development of small towns and relevant communities.
As a result of the research new scientific and practical results are received:
for the first time
identified prospects for glocalization, which organically combine the benefits of localization and globalization, as a strategic vector for the development of small towns in Ukraine, which allowed to develop an integrated model of small town management based on the transformation of existing small towns into a real territorial product, as the basis of their economic growth, as well as the formation of a strategy for the development of a small town on the basis of marketing management.
It is improved
meaningful characteristics of local communities with centers in small towns and the appropriate classification, which provided identification of problems and trends in the development of small towns in the regional, national, global dimensions;
approaches to the system of monitoring and indicators of effective management of local communities centered in small towns, which allowed to define the "reference" small town as an object of scientific analysis and relevant public policy;
acquired further development
study of state policy on small towns as a component of state regional policy and decentralization policy, which allowed to identify relevant trends, dynamics, contradictions and implementation problems;
methods of situational analysis of the processes taking place at the level of a specific city, due to which the approaches to the formation of a strategy for the development of a small town on the basis of marketing management of tourist and recreational activities have been developed.
