T. Mitev, S. Hamidinska, P. Parapanov – Faculty of Philosophy and History, Paisii Hilendarski University of Plovdiv, DUEkoS project
In September 2025, Plovdiv City Council adopted an Ordinance creating low-emission zones. Our study shows that the debate around this measure is less about the problem itself and more about who has the right to produce knowledge about it.
The main argument
None of the people in our study deny that Plovdiv’s air is polluted. The dispute is about whose data and whose criteria count. Resistance to the measure comes less from denying the environmental problem and more from people feeling excluded from how knowledge about the risk is produced.
How we did the study
- Documents: the Ordinance, the public consultation report (30 submissions, July–September 2025) and the Air Quality Programme 2025–2029.
- 8 in-depth interviews with civic activists, affected citizens, technical and medical experts, and institutional representatives. We chose them to cover the widest possible range of views.
- Theory: risk society (Ulrich Beck), cultural theory of risk (Mary Douglas), civic epistemologies (Sheila Jasanoff) and discourse coalitions (Maarten Hajer).
- Cross-checking against the municipality’s official dispersion modelling data.
Key findings
1. Who pollutes? The Regional Environmental Inspectorate blames household heating (40–50%) and puts transport and industry together at just 2–5%. A city councillor blames traffic, a lawyer cites a 2017 court ruling, and an engineer points to tyre wear. Official data show that each of them is partly right. In the Kamenitsa district, heating accounts for 37.6% of fine particulate matter, but in Trakia only 15%, and there traffic accounts for more than half. For nitrogen dioxide, traffic’s share reaches 92%.
2. The forgotten source. Nobody mentions regional “background” pollution that comes from outside the city. Yet it makes up between 31% and 65% of measured levels, which is more than any local source.
3. Trust in data. Citizens point to a monitoring station that was moved from Banya Starinna (annual average around 60 µg/m³, against a limit of 40) to Kamenitsa Park, which has hedges, sprinklers and regular street sweeping. Citizen networks of more than 100 sensors give their own picture, but it is not officially recognised.
4. Fairness. A classic car owner argues that emission categories are based on a car’s year of manufacture, not its real emissions. A car driven 50 km a year pollutes less than a new one driven 20,000 km.
5. Expert against expert. The engineer sees nitrogen oxides as the bigger problem. The public health physician names fine particles as the deadliest pollutant and points to London, where similar zones have reduced deaths.
6. The institution’s language. The municipality rejects submissions that lack a “concrete proposal” without engaging with their arguments. It defers requests for park-and-ride car parks to future plans.
Conclusions
Trust in the measurements turns out to matter as much for public support as the measure itself. We recommend including independent citizen data in the official dialogue more widely and transparently, even if that data does not gain formal status.
