2013 Issue №1(15)

Through a situational approach to strategic management of regional and urban development it is possible to identify the interaction between the managerial process and mechanism; bring together the spatial and activity-related concepts of territorial development; and explain the phenomenon in question from both general and specific perspectives. Territorial development is becoming the principal object of strategic management of a region or city, its key tool being the utilization of its own good practices. The main objective of territorial development is increasing the capacity for constructive interaction between all its “actors and factors”. In this situation, the monitoring territorial development is seen as an integral part of management. It ensures the inventory, observation, and comparison of various trends determining the situation, as well as the results of actions aimed at its targeted alteration. Monitoring helps not only to promptly identify threats, but also to detect the opportunities for  developing the situation in the desired directions within the “natural” trends of its dynamics. The situational approach to the monitoring of regional and urban development presented in the article was implemented in the development of the Strategy for the Socioeconomic Development of the City of Moscow until 2015 (as commissioned by the Department of Economic Policy and Development of the Government of Moscow) by an international team headed by the experts of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration and the Higher School of Economics.

Marine spatial planning has been widely applied in the leading maritime countries. However, it is not so common in Russia, since the relevant legal framework is largely absent. Spatial planning shares a number of features with marine planning, especially when it comes to the tools, principles, and methods. The differences mainly concern characteristics of the planning object; principles of delineating the borders of territories and water areas; and the authorities responsible for regulation. The use of marine space, its parts, and sea (water) is covered by a number of laws of the Russian Federation. However, a mechanism for marine planning has yet to be integrated into Russian legislation. The Strategy for the Development of Maritime Activities until 2030 sets the task of developing such mechanism. In this article we address key strategies that can be used in the development of marine planning tools: assessment of applicability of the existing legal framework to water relations; territorial development and strategic planning; and possible distribution of authority between different governing bodies in this new field of administrative activity.

The processes related to the development of international tourism in Lithuania are of importance for the growth of economic, social, and cultural welfare. The increasing tourist and recreational attractiveness of such cities as Druskininkai, Trakai, Palanga, Vilnius, and Klaipeda to international tourists, as well as an advantageous quality-price ratio of the services offered contribute to the growth of competitiveness on the international tourism market. Service standards applied in Lithuania at the international tourism market uphold and improve the image of Lithuania in the Baltic Sea region. The interregional cooperation between Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia in the field of international tourism development is based on the principle of public private partnership. It has been recently acknowledged that the three Baltic States form an integrating region in the field of international tourism and thus affect the Kaliningrad region, North-east Poland, Southern Finland, and partially Belarus. Therefore, Lithuania plays an important role in the integration of the tourist infrastructure of the Kaliningrad region into the tourist system of the Baltics. This study aims to conduct a comparative analysis of the processes relating to the development of international tourism in Lithuania in the context of the Baltic States. We also carry out the comparison of regional competitive factors and trace the patterns for further development of international tourism in Lithuania in the framework of cross-border and transborder cooperation.