The article discusses the comprehensive verification of spatial disparities in the socio-economic development of territories, the aspects of managing these processes and phenomena. The subject of the research is the hierarchy of urban-rural and regional spaces, including centers, sub-centers, peripheral areas, and microdistricts, as well as the interconnections between them. The relevance of the topic is determined by the need not only to "measure" differences between cities and villages but also to understand how they are formed at the intersection of objective economic mechanisms (the development of the basic and service sectors, transport accessibility, multiplicative effects) and the subjective perceptions of residents regarding quality of life, values, and their "place" in the region. It is important to identify which connections between urban and rural areas, between center and periphery, are maintained due to traditional route networks, social, and family ties, and which are being disrupted due to the cancellation of routes, changes in economic specialization, and institutional transformations. The work combines methods of spatial econometrics, principal component analysis, and indexing of the basic and service sectors, as well as an interdisciplinary approach that integrates economic-geographical and sociological analysis. The scientific novelty of the study lies in proposing an interdisciplinary framework for verifying spatial disparities in territorial development, which includes not only a quantitative assessment of the level of development using indices such as IRBS, IROS, and the global Moran index but also subsequent sociological interviews with the population, analysis of "codes," and the formation of an index of subjective well-being. It is shown that combining objective indicators with subjective data can form the basis for more accurate and sustainable managerial responses aimed at reducing inequality and leveling the conditions for the development of urban and rural spaces. It is confirmed that spatial inequality and segregation in the regional hierarchy are associated with the peculiarities of the functioning of independent economic agents, whose subjective decisions about the price and comfort of a territory determine patterns of concentration and deconcentration of development.
Georgii Evgenievich Popov (Sun,) studied this question.