Shock to the system: Examining legacy effects of Plovdiv 2019 on sustainable development, urban metabolism, and resilience
What legacy effects does an intensive event (or shock) such as the 2019 ECOC have on Plovdiv’s current urban development processes? A crucial question to be asked 10 years after Plovdiv was announced as the European Capital of Culture, and 5 years after the "shocking 2019" the year of the title. One contemporary and profound approach to answer this is Boyana Stoilova's Master's thesis.
Boyana Stoilova is a Bulgarian MA Cultural Economics and Entrepreneurship programme student at Erasmus University Rotterdam. This year, 2024, she successfully defended her MA thesis about key research on urban interventions in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, examining the legacy effects of Plovdiv - European Capital of Culture. More specifically, Boyana explores how culture-related initiatives shape urban environments, particularly when Plovdiv held the European Capital of Culture in 2019. She employs the concept of urban metabolism to understand how cities function similarly to living organisms, and what interventions affect urban resilience.
As part of the research methods were the semi-structured interviews with 12 participants. Victor Yancov was invited to give his experience and insight as part of the Plovdiv 2019 team.
Learn more about the thesis and Boyana's conclusions in the slides below, or download the full presentation here. MA-Thesis-Pld2019
Here is the thesis's Abstract:
Our research seeks to enrich the broader discourse on urban development strategies in Europe and bring Western and Eastern European countries closer together, further uniting our societies and strengthening urban resilience. What this work aims to achieve is to deepen our understanding of socioeconomic shocks affecting the urban development trajectories in the SEE region. To do so we examine the 2019 ECOC initiative in Plovdiv comparing it to a small-scale socioeconomic shock that challenges the city’s urban resilience. Our focus is on exploring the legacy effect of the ECOC initiative on Plovdiv’s current urban development. To address the research question, we drew insights from many academic works, and outlined five key themes related to our study: ownership, governance, cultural heritage, participation, and local identity. Our research employs a qualitative research approach. We conducted 12 online in-depth semi-structured interviews with various stakeholders. What all our conclusions highlight is the urgent need to rethink the notions of ownership, governance, participation, and local identity when it comes to cultural and natural heritage, hence supporting policymakers and citizens alike in seeking novel models for cooperation based on participatory democracy and adaptive reuse principles.
