The paper presents a methodology for modeling the spatial development of the economy on the example of Russia. The relevance of the study is due to the need to ensure the rational use of the country's territorial space by the authorities, which implies taking into account the system of classical factors of economic zoning: the availability of transport and social infrastructure, the optimization of the settlement system and the location of production facilities. Modeling of spatial development

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... s carried out by building an optimization model for identifying macroeconomic regions. The minimum level of spatial development heterogeneity was selected as an optimality criterion between the regions included in the macroregions and between the macroregions of the country by calculating the Theil index. The model is based on the concept of product space and the assumption that the optimal macroregions provides high rates of the Economic Complexity Index. Thus, the methodology for constructing a model of spatial development includes determining the composition of the equations system and their structure, formulating the assumptions and limitations of the model, and determining the objective function of the model. The visualization of the results is based on the construction of a graph, the vertices of which are the types of production activities in the macroregion. The final formalization of the model presupposes obtaining a system of macroregions that provide a high diversification of the types of production activities; minimizing the heterogeneity of the spatial development; determination of the promising specialization of the macroregion as it develops.