The paper systematizes problems of territorial development from the perspective of the theories and concepts that are characteristic of traditional socio-economic geography. These problems include the area-integrated, nodal-economic and territorial-industrial ones. The role of socio-economic geography in finding scientific explanation and solution to these problems becomes more important, since it has research programs that reveal the dialectic of the knowledge of territorial organization of society and economy based not on a single theory or on a set of theories, but on their interdisciplinary synthesis. The research program is relatively autonomous from practice and gives it only its most important results that can be used for the organization of program-target management, as well. The goal of the paper is to include an analysis of the relationship between the categories “problem” and “program” in the methodology of research on territorial organization of economy. Based on the experience of national and foreign research, we show that the “problem-program” combination gives an additional effect in the scientific explanation of territorial development, if the “problem” is presented in the form of a complex theoretical or practical question, the answer to which requires both basic and new knowledge, while the “research program” is presented as one of the main units of science (according to I. Lacatos). In this case, the structural-functional dynamics of development of a particular region is considered from the aspect of organizing the work on addressing the problems of a particular type based on research and economic programs. We think that it is advisable to make a transition from research programs to economic programs according to a definite sequence, namely the one which the very problem “goes through” by the following stages: scientific search, scientific-technological and organizational-economic. The paper provides examples on the problem of combining the three principles of social development: economic efficiency, social justice and environmental well-being, the anisotropic model of a complex communication networks (according to R. Domański), in the framework of which this problem could be considered, and the problem approach to the analysis of territorial economic structure in the regions of the European North of Russia
Keywords
problem, program, territorial development, territorial complex and territorial-sectoral problems, economic program, scientific research program