Pseudo-smart cities: the erasure of Belgrade's Old Sava Bridge

Source abstract

“Pseudo-smart cities” name urban governance configurations in which smart city discourse legitimates opacity rather than reduces it. The framework shifts analysis from implementation failure to strategic function, asking what the transparency gap does, not why it persists. Belgrade invokes smart city ambitions in municipal discourse while dismantling infrastructure through processes that bypass transparency. The 2024–2025 removal of the Old Sava Bridge makes this configuration concrete: heritage infrastructure forces an explicit choice between stewardship and erasure, exposing what routine infrastructure projects obscure. Three mechanisms structure pseudo-smart governance: modernization discourse that delegitimizes preservation; technological authority that displaces participatory processes; and performative transparency that generates compliance records while insulating outcomes from public influence. The procedural record verifies these mechanisms empirically. An environmental assessment approved in February 2021 for bridge construction explicitly excluded demolition from its scope. A separate demolition assessment was rejected in August 2022 as unnecessary. A stakeholder engagement plan was dated May 2025, six months after dismantling commenced in November 2024.