PROVIDING SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT OF SMALL TOWNS – HISTORIC LOCALITIES OF FEDERAL IMPORTANCE

Abstract

Lately problems of small towns of our country development have become sport lights of public, bodies of federal executive power and science dealing with issues of national economy. During the last two and a half decades small to wns experienced the hardest depressive effects caused by problems of national economy. It is, for instance, the massive shut-down of enterprises (often town-supporting ones), which turned out to be uncompetitive in comparison with import, unemployment, fast migration of the population to big cities and consequently, a deep infrastructure decline and overall drop in the standard of living. Attempts to solve these problems are taken at different levels (from resolutions by federal executive power to local initiatives), however, they have sporadic nature and in general, do not demonstrate the planned effectiveness. Small towns that possess the status of historic localities of the federal importance face even more serious problems, as sustainable economic development of them is actually impossible. The article studies key causes of such problematic situations’ arising and shows key steps taken by bodies of executive power during the last period in order to resolve these problems. It analyzes complex programs of developing such localities with the use of state-private partnership as a promising method of providing sustainable development of small towns – historic localities. This analysis was made on the basis of the touristrecreation cluster ‘Kasimovskiy’ (Kasimov, Ryzan region).