ИСТИНА

The current presentation highlighted the results drawing on work within the joint projects as well as provides some important findings from the collaborative project „Mathematical-cartographic assessment of the medical-ecological situation in cities of European Russian for their integrated ecological characteristics (2018-2020) funded by the Russian Foundation for Basic research. The presentation gives an overview of the current urban societal and environmental challenges in Russia focusing on the most important problems. It also highlights the state of the art in the research field of green infrastructure and ecosystem services shaping research needs and providing the nationally recognized and adopted terms and concepts. It critically examines the role and contribution of green infrastructure providing a high variety of different ecosystem services to cope with diverse urban societal challenges (with a focus on air pollution, landscape degradation, cold and heat stress and recreation opportunities). Exemplified on the cities of Moscow, Kirovsk, Archangelsk, Smolensk and Sevastopol) it focuses on the problems and potentials of urban green during the transition, by presenting the current state, change, meanings and future prospects of urban green. It presents some results of ecosystem services assessments calculated for some cities. Discussing the role of urban nature for people within the ecosystem services and green infrastructure concepts and how people perceive, value, use or interact with urban green, the talk provides interesting findings from greening strategies for sustainable planning and management in and around cities situated in different climate and geographical conditions in different time periods. It also provides the results of some summer school projects conducted by students of MGU and HU Berlin within the projects mentioned above by inviting and involving students and Ph.D. researchers as well as experts dealing with these issues in challenging discussion.