Invisible infrastructures, visible breakdowns: Rethinking smart pedestrian crossings through maintenance and everyday use

Abstract This article examines smart pedestrian crossings as contested infrastructures within smart city initiatives. Drawing on qualitative interviews with technology developers, municipal officials, accessibility experts, and citizen focus groups, it explores how these systems are experienced as both ordinary and fragile. The analysis highlights three dimensions: the (in)visibility of crossings and their uneven accessibility, the role of maintenance and repair in sustaining reliability, and the governance dependencies that reveal forms of infrastructural power. The study shows how moments of breakdown produce “broken data” and make visible the infrastructural power of private vendors, raising critical questions of accountability and control in datafied urban life.