Contest as a method of exposure of the quality of municipal strategies

Objectives. Find the answer to the question ?What are the qualities of a ?good? municipal strategy of socio-economic development??. Methods. In order to reach a consensus about the quality of municipal strategy it was proposed to use the Contest of the urban strategies, which was held in the cities in Russia with population over 100.000 people. The contest resulted in division of the participants in 3 groups: winners: Orsk, Samara, Cherepovets; finalists: Vologda, Irkutsk, Kaliningrad, Novoshakhtinsk; semifinalists: Bryansk, Krasnoyarsk, Sochi, Tambov, Ulan-Ude. The contest created three sources to define a good strategy: feedback from the jury; analysis of strategies of the winners; feedback from mayors of the finalist cities. Results. 1. Analysis of the feedback from the jury gives us the following list of successful strategy characteristics: Frequently occurring: ? Existence of monitoring system and established implementation mechanism ? Ambitiousness correlative with the city scale and implementation mechanism ? Existence of title projects Less frequently occurring: Involvement of the head of the city and the whole community; Human-oriented; Focus on specific projects etc. 2. The content of all the strategies was coded with the special code developed by Leontiev?s Center to formalize the comparison of the leading and outsiders strategies. Common features of leading strategies: -ambitiousness -complexity (big number of declared and elaborated routes) -active use of title projects -attention to economical diversification issues -usage of institutional and constitutional economic support -special attention to educational and cultural development -special attention to implementation via mechanisms of civil autonomy and effectiveness of local authorities 3. Leading cities mayors stated that a good strategy is the one which is: Cooperative ? a strategy elaborated collectively leading to consolidation of local community and key authorities; Independent ? a strategy elaborated by the local community with no governmental influence, irrespective; Deliberative - a strategy elaborated by the local community considering its own interests; Ambitious - a strategy elaborated to reveal the potential of local resources and inspired by enthusiasm of locals; Realistic ? a strategy based on adequate situation analysis and establishing achievable goals and purposes; Realizable ? a strategy provided with an elaborated mechanism of implementation; when goals and purposes are being ambitious but provided with clear instruments of resource mobilization, performance control and results overview; Stable ? a strategy that does not change dramatically despite radical changes or possible power shifts. The prevalent opinion in Russia in 2014 is: a good municipal strategy is supposed to be ambitious, provided with an elaborated mechanism of implementation and monitoring, focusing on title projects, developed under control of city head in cooperation with key participants of urban development which is clear and approved by local community.