Experience of competitive positioning of agricultural territories

Increasing the investment and tourist attractiveness of agricultural territories requires a meaningful approach to finding their place in the spatial organization of the entire regional system and strategic positioning, taking into account obvious and latent competitive advantages. The Strategy for the Sustainable Development of Rural Areas of the Russian Federation for the period up to 2030 and the course taken towards import substitution reinforce the relevance of the issue under consideration. Positioning a place allows for a more systematic approach to solving the «existence» issues of municipalities, identifying strategic priorities for their further development, and focusing limited resources on «growth points». The ideological foundation of positioning can be based on various factors, such as the name of the locality, its geographical features, culture, economic activities, unique characteristics of the local residents, and more. The identity of a territory can be determined by various factors, such as the name of a locality, the specifics of its geography, culture, economic activities, unique features of local residents, etc. The thematic diversity of places indicates the variability of methodological approaches to the search for a unique image of the territory and the definition of priority areas for its development. To this end, the authors of the article, using the example of the Yuriev-Polsky district of the Vladimir region, proposed one of the possible approaches to location positioning, which predetermined the solution of a number of tasks.: – identification of the unique features of the district and its competitive advantages against the background of other municipalities of the Vladimir region; – building an ideological model of the strategic positioning of the area. The formulated purpose and objectives determined the structure of the author’s research, and the methods of scientific generalization, systematic, comparative and statistical analysis, synthesis, formed its methodological basis. The methodological approach developed and presented by the authors has been tested in the municipalities of the Vladimir and Moscow regions in the process of developing and updating the strategies for the socio-economic development of municipalities with the participation of the Center for Strategic Development of the Vladimir branch of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, whose experts are the authors of the study. This approach can be used as a basis for positioning the territories of other regions of the Russian Federation in order to form a spatial vision of regional socio-economic systems and increase their competitiveness, both in general and in terms of local entities. The author’s experience can be used by local governments in the development of strategic planning documents and expand theoretical and practical views on issues of managing the competitiveness of territories.