The purpose of the article is to consider the institutional foundations of the rational use of agricultural land in a multicultural economy. The formation of land use is faced with the acute problem of organizing a sustainable competitive land use, ensuring a high level of marketability of production and a sufficient level of profitability in conditions of the developing land market. This article discusses the rational use of agricultural land in a multicultural economy, taking into account structural and resource indicators. The efficiency of land use in farms with different land ownership depends on increasing labour productivity, strengthening the economic regime, increasing the intensification of production, using internal reserves and agricultural production opportunities, and, especially, rational use of land. The greatest efficiency of production and use of land has been achieved in large agricultural formations, where high-performance equipment is used, crop rotations are observed, and there is greater availability of credit resources, subsidies, and leasing. The monitoring data of the Committee of the Republic of Kazakhstan on Statistics for 1.01.2020 indicate that 93.7% of peasant farms have a land area of up to 500 hectares. To the greatest extent, small-earth peasant farms have become widespread in the southern region, where the share in the total number of up to 50 hectares is 90.1%, while in the northern region only 8.1%, central — 3.9%, and western — 11.3%. In this regard, the tasks of preserving productive agricultural lands, and optimizing arable land and acreage in terms of quantitative and qualitative characteristics of land become a priority. The solution to these tasks is connected with the improvement of technologies for maintaining and increasing the bio-productivity of agricultural lands, the development of technologies for rational land management, land use, and land protection, the creation of effective organizational and legal mechanisms for managing agricultural lands, as well as the development of state monitoring of agricultural lands. Optimization of land use in farms and agricultural enterprises of based on the proposed methodology, taking into account state support measures, will create a basis for a new stage in the development of land reform and will create incentives for the effective use of agricultural land.

The purpose of this article is to analyse the rural development land use projects for farmstead site selection prepared in the municipality of Elektrėnai during the period between the years of 2012 and 2016, and to determine their potential impact on the growth of built-up areas and the rational use of land. According to the survey data, it can be stated that drafting rates of rural development land use projects for farmstead site selection tend to grow especially in those municipalities that are close to Vilnius and which have a good geographical position as well as a special landscape and national cultural heritage values (Vilnius district, Trakai district and Elektrėnai district municipalities). Having carried out the agricultural land change analysis, it is noted that during the analysis period (2012 - 2016) in Elektrėnai municipality, similarly to the whole Vilnius county, land utilities structure is dominated by agricultural land, mostly arable land, but the significant trend of agricultural land reduction at the expense of the growth of built-up areas was noticed. During the analysed period the built-up areas in the municipality of Elektrėnai increased even by 6 times, and the area of agricultural land declined on average, by almost 2 percent every year. A detailed analysis of specific projects and information gathered during qualitative research suggest that the prepared rural development land use projects for farmstead site selection are not prepared for the improvement of the actual farming activity conditions in constructing farm and other buildings.

According to the fast development and distribution of GNSS technologies all over the world, the large numbers of reference GNSS stations have appeared in Ukraine. These stations are included in the state and several private networks. The permanent GNSS observations gathered within these networks are processed and analysed by the Centre of Lviv Polytechnic National University. A cumulative solution (coordinates expressed at the specified epoch and velocities of all stations) was estimated by using the GAMIT-GLOBK software. The authors made several numerous tests using certain configuration of fiducial stations which belong to the EPN A class to transfer ITRF08 frame into Ukraine area and choose the best strategy of alignment of the Ukrainian national GNSS network to the EPN. Three different solutions with cretin tolerance set for Ukrainian GNSS network were estimated and each time the different set of coordinates was obtained. The differences reached several millimetres. Also for verification, our solution was compared with EPN solution. Received coordinates and velocities could have a geophysical interpretation and provide very useful information for local geodesy tasks.

Land consolidation – an important stage of agricultural and rural development. This is a significant land use planning process, when private, municipal and state land parcels located in rural areas are redistributed in a complex way, their boundaries and location are changed by the prepared land consolidation project of a certain area. Recently, there has been a lot of talk about the benefits of land consolidation to farm structure and productivity, restructuring of rural areas and development, but there is not enough emphasis on the benefits of our environment, landscape and biodiversity. Experience of European countries shows that the land consolidation projects can be useful not only for farmers, but also for our environment and its individual components. The article gives an overview of not only the positive aspects of environmental preservation. The fact that the land consolidation projects can bring negative results (i.e. that they are implemented without regard to the sustainable transformation of the territory) is noted as well.

The priority objective of the residential urban areas development – to improve the quality of life, sustainable development principles in order to form compact urban areas and polycentric functionally and socially integrated urban and suburban structure with the help of efforts of general public institutions as well as natural and legal persons. A living area today must comply with the needs of population from various social layers, so, when planning residential areas, it is necessary to assess the varied potential of the population needs and the quality of life expression. Therefore the article seeks to find out attitudes to residents’ environment, development of social services network, infrastructure condition, functional and planned structure of the area. For the implementation of the objective, the programme in the research sites has been prepared. This programme allows multifaceted examination of existing residential areas, the assessment of their physical condition, public opinion, public needs, comments and suggestions of professionals. After analysing the results of the research and drafting conceptual principles, it can be stated that the future of Lithuanian residential districts and cities depends on the territorial spatial planning system, which is affected by the free market and democratic society. Territorial spatial planning of residential microdistricts or blocks is the key to building sustainable and attractive cities.

The volume of demanded groups of farms is defined with the help of the developed method taking into account a type of farm machinery in accordance with their purpose and set of properties.

The Agricultural Property Agency (APA) was founded on 16 July 2003 pursuant to the provisions of the Act of 11 April 2003 on the establishment of the agricultural system. The APA was established for the purpose of managing the agricultural property of the State Treasury in Poland. Its main tasks included the endorsement of ownership and structural changes relating to agricultural land in rural areas as well as the promotion of social goals. This article focuses on the social aspects of the APA’s operations based on an analysis of the data supplied by the Regional Branch of the APA in Olsztyn. The obtained information and materials were analyzed to identify programs and activities initiated by the Olsztyn branch in pursuit of social goals. The results of the analyses were presented in the table format. Community interviews were conducted and photographs were taken during the field study. The results were used to describe the social aspects of APA’s operations in rural areas.

Accessibility is a popular concept in many research areas, including spatial planning, where it denotes the possibility of reaching a specific location. Accessibility is not a characteristic feature of a single location: it is always measured between at least two locations (places), and it is strictly determined by the mode of transport. Subject to the evaluated parameter, accessibility falls into different categories, including physical accessibility which is defined by distance (meters, kilometers), temporal accessibility which is expressed in minutes and hours, and economic accessibility which is denoted by cost. In highly urbanized areas and their rural outskirts, spatial policies need to be coordinated to guarantee the effective distribution of functions and services. The optimization of accessibility should be the key goal of spatial policies adopted at both local and metropolitan level. The aim of this study was to analyze the applicability of public data sources and GIS tools for analyzing and improving spatial accessibility. A wide range of tools and data supports detailed evaluations of the spatial coverage and effectiveness of services (public and commercial), multi-objective optimization of planned locations and determination of the optimal service areas (with the use of gravitation and potential methods). Spatial planning is a process of selecting the optimal and rational functions for the existing space. A very wide variety of analytical tools can be deployed to acquire and process public data and research data. The results of multi-objective analyses can be support the planning proces.

The article generalizes theoretical and practical addition to the components of mathematical processing of geodetic measurements, which are the basis and used to support work in land management and cadastre. The research identifies general components of mathematical processing of geodetic measurements and components which are primarily used in the field of land management and cadastre. Completed investigation of the theoretical and practical foundations of these components and developed theoretical and practical additions improve the results of mathematical processing of geodetic measurements.

The article analyses the changes of agricultural production development and the demand of rural planning in the post-reform period. The main aim of the research is to identify the problems of land use and the formation of farms as the territorial-production structures in Lithuania as well as to analyse the possibilities of finding solutions to them. Tendencies of the decrease of the number of rural residents and farms were determined, the regulation of which is possible by improving working and living conditions in rural areas by means of public support measures. In order to form land holdings of rational farms, to coordinate the residential construction, farmlands and the local road network, to preserve efficient agricultural land, it is suggested preparing the documents of land management planning. The implementation of these documents is associated with the regulation of the land use provided for by legislation, formation of cultural landscape, as well as with the EU and public support for the development of production of viable farms and environmental protection. It is recommended to supplement the rules of the preparation of documents of land management planning with methodological requirements for the arrangement of land parcels and for their conversion into other agricultural areas.