Mission and goals of territorial development: common rules of strategic planning

The study focuses on the fact that the goal-setting is pivotal while devising (updating) the strategy for the social and economic development of the territo-ry. The research analyzes the mission and principal goals approved by the modern strategic planning instruments of million-person cities in the Russian Federation. The major challenge of the Russian stra-tegic planning lies in the lack of common approach-es (techniques) applied to generate territorial strate-gic planning documents. The author develops rec-ommendations for improving the goal-setting pro-cess at different levels of the territorial strategy de-velopment. The study can be useful for university and PhD students, researchers, experts devising (updating) and implementing the strategies for the social and economic development of the territories, public and municipal officials and other interested persons.