The subject of this study is the current municipal reform in the Russian Federation and an assessment of its impact on the legal status of science cities. The purpose of the article is to determine the theoretical approaches and practice of legislative regulation of the legal status of science towns, prospects for modern and future legal regulation of the peculiarities of local self-government in such a territory as a science city. The main hypothesis is that the blank method of regulating the peculiarities of local self government in science cities, perceived by the federal legislator, does not achieve its goal, which obviously requires a revision of approaches to legislative regulation of the status of such a special territory as a science city. The authors used both general research methods, including methods of analysis and synthesis, and industry methods, including the formal legal method. The main results. The authors note the inconsistency and inconsistency of the legislative regulation of the legal, organizational, economic and social foundations of science cities and the peculiarities of the implementation of local self-government in them. Foreign experience in the formation of analogues of Russian science cities demonstrates that, firstly, the creation and development of technopolises contributes to the formation of the most optimal forms of interaction between science and production. Secondly, foreign technopolises are usually formed at research centers and universities, without having a strict link to the territorial foundations of the functioning of municipalities. The authors claim that the science cities of the Russian Federation do not have a constitutional and legal status and are neither the subject of study of such a branch of Russian law as constitutional law, nor the subject of regulation of constitutional legislation. At the moment, the legal status of a science city in the Russian Federation has a dual nature: on the one hand, a science city is a municipal entity with the status of an urban district; on the other hand, it is a territory within which there is a scientific and production complex. At the same time, these two sides of the legal status of a science city in the Russian Federation are poorly interconnected at the level of regulatory regulation. It seems that a science city as a territory with a scientific and industrial complex obviously has a different legal nature than a science city - an urban district, as a territory within which the population and (or) local self-government bodies resolve issues of local importance. Conclusions. It is important to determine at the level of federal authorities the need for further consolidation of the status of municipalities or other legal status of the territory of a science city, which includes high-tech enterprises with a significant concentration of human and material scientific and technical resources, the use of which is aimed at the implementation of science and state scientific and technical policy. If the link "science city - municipal entity" is recognized as necessary and fundamental in the future, taking into account the provisions of Articles 12 and 132 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, it is necessary to establish, firstly, the legal features of the implementation of local self-government in science cities, and secondly, the basic principles of interaction of local self-government of science cities with public authorities as the solution of issues of local importance in the interests of the population living in the territory of the science city, and the forms and order of participation of the organization.
