Gukalova, I. V. Indicative Assessment of Spatial Justice in Mountain and Border Communities (On the Example of Zakarpattia and Chernivtsi Regions)

The article substantiates a methodology for the indicative assessment of spatial justice in the development of territorial communities and verifies it using the example of mountain, border, and mountain-border communities in the Zakarpattia and Chernivtsi regions. The methodology provides for the calculation of an integral index of spatial justice based on 29 indicators grouped into 8 thematic blocks: demographic potential, spatial-geographical accessibility, budgetary-fiscal potential, social infrastructure, trade and consumer services infrastructure, transport infrastructure, utility and engineering infrastructure, and accessibility of administrative services, as well as the construction and comparison of spatial justice “profiles.” The empirical base comprises data obtained from 42 model territorial communities. It is established that the overwhelming majority of the model territorial communities exhibit low to medium levels of spatial justice, indicating systemic structural deficits and objective constraints on their development. Differences are identified across specific vectors (components) of spatial justice among communities of different types: mountain communities in both oblasts underperform in terms of transport provision and trade services for the population, border communities—in terms of budgetary potential—while mountain-border communities form a zone of “dual peripheralization” and thus face both natural-geographical and socio-geographical challenges. The article presents the case of the 2025 bridge collapse in the Zhdenievo territorial community as a concrete manifestation of the infrastructural vulnerability of mountain territories. The findings indicate the need to develop a detailed functional typology of Ukraine’s territories that accounts for current factors shaping spatial justice, the consequences of the war, and EU standards.