Methodical Approaches to Typology of Small Towns as The Scientific Basis of Managing Their Development

The study of problems of social and economic development of small towns in the region in the conditions of decentralization is of particular importance today. This is due to the fact that small towns constitute a supporting structure of the settlement structure of the region, they are the engines of economic growth, produce innovative and investment influence on the adjacent territory, because it is here that the intellectual, scientific and educational potential is concentrated, and the developed industrial and social infrastructure is functioning. The purpose of the article is to implement the typology of small towns of the Transcarpathian region as the basis for forming a scientific basis for management of their social and economic development in the conditions of decentralization, revealing the specifics and peculiarities of their functioning and the necessity of a differentiated approach to the implementation of the state regional policy of regulation by their development. In the course of the research, general scientific methods have been used: induction and deduction (in the study of the features of the development of small towns of the Transcarpathian region and the region as a whole); systematization (in developing scientific approaches to typology of small towns according to the key parameters of their development); generalization (in the formulation of practical recommendations on the state regional policy of regulation of small towns development). Scientific novelty is connected with the substantiation of the thesis about the need to take into account in the process of typology of small towns the differentiation of the social and economic level of development of small towns, the available natural resource potential, the level of development of industrial and social infrastructure, the state of housing and communal services, the quality of human potential, the level of economic activity of the working-age population, its propensity to entrepreneurial activity, the ecological situation on the ground. The practical significance of the results is to implement the typology of the three main subsystems of the small towns of the Transcarpathian region - economic, social and ecological. Criterion characteristics of typology for each subsystem have been offered. Particular attention has been paid to the economic and social subsystems. On the basis of the multidimensional analysis, the typology of small towns has been carried out based on the dynamics of the demographic processes, including the ethnic component, which is important for Transcarpathia as a polyethnic region. Prospects for further research will be based on the separation of the main blocks of regional problems of small town development and the search for ways to solve them.