TRANSFORMATION OF RURAL RESETTLEMENT ON REGIONAL LEVEL (THE EXAMPLE OF CHERNIHIV REGION)

Abstract

The economic and socio-political factors caused transformational changes in rural settlement system of Chernihiv region. The reasonability of their analysis is caused by practice demands, and changes evaluation is based on data concerning population size of almost 1500 rural localities of Chernihiv region in 1989, 2001 and 2014. The study reveals that during 1989-2014 rural settlement network of the region reduced by 100 localities, and the localities with the population size of less than 50 people have the fastest level of inhabitants decrease – above 77%. With the increase of localities population size depopulation rate slows down. Thus, the analysis of empirical data (grouping of rural localities in accordance with population size) proves that distinctive peculiarities of structure of Chernihiv region rural settlement system are the following: settling in small localities and general increase in irregularity of population distribution. The evidence of small localities settlement is the rise of the part of very small rural localities in settlement network structure. During 1989 – 2014 the share of villages with the population size up to 50 people grew from 15.8% to 33%. The irregularity in population distribution is observed through the share increase of rural inhabitants that dwell in the localities of different population size. While in 1989 the main part of rural inhabitants lived in the villages with the population size up to 500-1000 and 1000-2000 people (62.7%), currently – in the villages with population up to 200-500 and 500-1000 people (67.4%). Eventually, the author proves the reasonability of using analysis results for administrative-territorial reform implementation, optimization of educational and medical establishment network in Chernihiv region.