State Territorial Policy in Modern Russia: Selected Constitutional and Legal Issues

Russia’s integral territorial structure ensures its development as a unified nation-state. An independent economic policy for the territorial development of the nation-state is an effective response to current external and internal challenges. This article presents a constitutional and legal analysis of Russia’s territorial development within the framework of the Spatial Development Strategy through 2030 and 2036. The relevance of the research stems from a number of existing gaps. First, the synergy of current legislative acts reveals gaps in integrated strategic planning, failing to form an effective supportive and nodal framework for public settlement. Second, there is a lack of strict regulation regarding the classification and nomenclature of settlements. Third, the relationship between the terms space and territory remains vague, as do the criteria used to compile the list of reference settlements in Russian regions. The research relies on general scientific methods used in legal science, as well as specific methods of scientific cognition, including comparative law, historical legal analysis, and statistical methods. The author identifies an existing dual approach to defining the term core settlement and develops a set of more reliable criteria for this type of settlement, while demonstrating the need to integrate the term rural agglomeration into integrated strategic planning.