The policy of conscious spatial development is the most important component of transition to new technological and socio-cultural ways of life. The article deals with the problem of theoretical understanding of spatial development, as well as the author’s concept of its study and approach to the formation of relevant policies.
The author proposes to distinguish between “developed” societies, capable of purpose fully shaping their own space, and “undeveloped” ones, capable only of adapting to spontaneous changes in their own space. In the political sense, the task of spatial development is to form, through a complex impact on society, stable systemic integral formations of joint life activity.
The article highlights two strategies for spatial development — revolutionary and evolutionary. Along with them, the author proposes to use the concept of the cultural diversity of society as a tool for analysing sociocultural environments. According to the author’s approach, it is necessary to study the socio-cultural environment in a particular territory as a unique composition of social practices, historically self-reproducing on the basis of typological cultural patterns — traditional, modern, and communicative.
The author comes to the conclusion that spatial development strategies focused only on one of the cultural patterns lead to the fact that part of the population perceives the policy of implementing spatial development programmes as alien to itself, and this creates additional tension in the processes of transformation of societies. Therefore, in the process of forming spatial development projects, along with economic studies of the characteristics of social space, it is necessary to conduct studies of the cultural patterns that are inherent in the people who form it.
The author believes that harmonisation of social practices that are formed on the basis of and within the framework of various cultural patterns is one of the tasks of the policy of spatial development and a factor in the sustainability of society. Therefore, the cultural policy should imply comprehensive support for the development of all cultural patterns on the basis of a dialogue of cultures. Regulators from different modes provide social communication and exchange on the scale of family and tribal, communal integrity, the nation state, and on the scale of global communities. Therefore, their support is required for the reproduction of society in modern conditions.
