Biocultural Diversity – joining of cultural and natural heritage in historical urban areas

The main target of submitted project proposal is applied research on both national and cultural identity in the frame of sustainable management of cultural and historical urban heritage. This topic is closely related to the Urban Green Infrastructure (UGI) in heritage cities. Under urban heritage conservation effort, the project proposal is aimed to multidisciplinary assessment of UGI importance for local cultural identity of residents and visitors with natural and historical heritage of cities. There are other supplementary targets of project proposal, such as evaluation of UGI cultural and environmental benefits and experimental development of sophisticated support tools (special database, software, interactive maps, and methodology) for maintaining of Czech national Garden Arts and Landscape Architecture traditions. Next target is also applied research on support tools for sustainable management of historical urban parks and gardens in the context of global climate change (in the frame of a new phenomenon of heat-islands in cities related to global warming). Analysis of UGI significance for local people in the covid-19 pandemic time period in heritage cities is also an important topic of the project. A planned research methods in the project proposal are highly innovative. This multidisciplinary methodological approach to applied research of natural and cultural urban heritage is novelty in the Czech Republic. All results of applied research in this project would be used in sustainable management practice of UGI in heritage cities in accordance to declared interest of users (management makers, state authorities, and non-government organizations for conservation of cultural and natural heritage in cities).