The development process of any area is anfractuous. It is a multi-stage process. It starts with the area’s attractiveness, attractingresources, which are necessary for its development and ensures their preservation and retention for the area. When using theseresources optimally, efficiently and productively, area’s competitive advantages are achieved and, the area becomes competitive.Competitiveness is driving force and potential of growth of the territory. Growth facilitates quantitative changes of the resources,i.e. accumulation and development of resources, leading to state of development of the territory. The purpose of the process of territorialdevelopment is qualitative distribution and management of these resources aiming at achieving the concrete result – state ofdevelopment of the territory. In this article, the author structures stages of the territory development process in a definite sequencetaking into account earlier developed theoretical findings in this sphere, as well as she completes the layout of these stages with herown scientific view concerning the final aim of the territorial development to be achieved in the process of the development of theterritory. This aim is the territory’s state of development, which can be measured and compared, when considering success of theprocess of territorial development.
In the article, the author empirically approbates the structural scheme for the evaluation of the territorial state of development elaborated previously assessing territorial state of development of the statistical regions of Latvia. The scheme comprises four objective social economic elements and two subjective elements. The average values of normalized objective and subjective indicators for each region were calculated applying the most appropriate indicator of the statistical regions available in the national statistical database of Latvia to the each element of the scheme and normalizing the values of the selected indicators. Allocation of the statistical regions of Latvia in accordance with the normalized objective and subjective indicators was performed using the W. Zapf’s matrix, which provides a possibility to consider the territorial state of development not just in a quantitative but as well in a qualitative aspect, i.e., within the framework of the pluralistic territorial development paradigm suggesting a parallel existence of diverse development natures (qualities) in the global environment instead of applying a single quantitative scale to all territories being studied. In the result of the approbation of the structural scheme for the territorial state of development evaluation, it is not possible to single out a distinct statistical region of Latvia in accordance with its highest or lowest development level, rather it could be merely stated that each of the regions is developed in a different quality since each region has its own nature of development.