Zelenograd was founded in 1958 as a new town in the Soviet Union, and developed as a center of electronics, microelectronics and the computer industry known as the "Soviet/Russian Silicon Valley".

The city color is green and its emblematic animal is the squirrel.Zelenograd was founded in 1958 as an unnamed planned city near the village and railway station of Kryukovo on a previously empty, forested place, and its architecture and civic layout yields to one general architectural plan (chief architects Igor Rozhin (1956–1963), then Igor Pokrovsky (1963–2002)), which has appreciable influence from the garden city movement, the development of the Tapiola district in Finland, and new towns in the United Kingdom (Harlow and others).

Some researchers of Soviet electronics history mentioned that a similar idea was proposed to the Soviet government by two fugitive Silicon Valley engineers - Alfred Sarant (more known in Russia as Philip Staros) and Joel Barr (Joseph Berg).

In 1988, Zelenograd incorporated the former village of Kryukovo, one of the important sites during the Battle of Moscow (October 1941 – January 1942).

A local football team Zelenograd (nicknamed Zelyono-Belye, or Green-Whites) was founded in 2002 and in 2007-2010 had been playing in the Russian Second Division.