Governing by Not Seeing: Institutional Silence and Non-Decision in Urban Tourism

Urban tourism scholarship has extensively examined how places become institutionally visible through planning and governance frameworks, but far less attention has been devoted to how invisibility is actively produced and stabilized within tourism planning systems. This article conceptualizes institutional silence as a governance condition through which spaces remain widely known and materially present while staying outside strategic agendas and formal decision-making processes. Focusing on the subterranean tunnel system beneath Petrovaradin Fortress in Novi Sad, Serbia, the study reframes invisibility as the outcome of routinized non-decision and administrative deferral rather than policy failure. Drawing on longitudinal ethnographic research (2011–2026), including 126 interviews, sustained site immersion, and analysis of successive planning documents, the findings reveal a stable configuration in which non-engagement persists across planning cycles despite sustained awareness and affective responses. The article demonstrates how routinized non-decision functions as a durable mechanism through which urban tourism planning systems reproduce spatial marginalization.