SCIENTIFIC FOUNDATIONS OF THE SPATIAL ECONOMY AND THE THEORY OF NEW ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

The modern political and economic processes have had a significant impact on the change in the economic policy of Russia and its “internal” economic space. As a result of the “sanction” blocking of the significant sectors of the economy, the importance of considering the spatial factor of socio-economic development in the basic development program documents has increased. The article examines the main approaches to spatial organization of the regional economy and strategic directions of spatial development in the context of the “Strategy of Spatial Development of the Russian Federation for the Period up to 2025”. These approaches are based on the joint evolution of this organization and the regional settlement system under the influence of a multiple external and internal factors, including the implementation of a rational state policy of regional development. The study examines the main provisions of the spatial economy as an independent scientific field and the theory of new economic geography. It shows the methodological similarity between these two scientific disciplines. The article shows that the basis of spatial development is the integration of specific forms of spatial organization of the economy into large and / or largest agglomerations. The leading role in this integration belongs to the regional communications system, which unites economic centers localized in an allocated space into an integral system and ensures the economic space unity. The implementation of the spatial economy provisions is studied on the example of the Northern Sea Route as a regional communications system, which is in fact the center of the “assembly” of the Arctic space. The functional dominant of the agglomeration as a form of spatial organization of the regional economy is creating such high-quality life conditions that are optimized with the rational economic development of the regional space while maintaining the economic situation at an acceptable level. These are the conditions that form communicative ties, which are the framework for uniting various elements of the regional space.