Urban Sustainability Studies as an Integrated Academic Field: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Although urban studies are vital for a sustainable society, comprehensive meta-level overviews are scarce. To map the field and identify emerging areas, we analyzed over 100,000 publications containing the terms “urban” and “sustainable” or “sustainability” using citation network analysis and natural language processing following the PRISMA protocol. Emerging areas encompassed the economic–environmental relationship, smart sensing and urban air mobility, green development at the metropolitan scale, soil heavy metal pollution, tourism and emissions, and heatwave exposure countermeasures. Future research priorities included developing an integrated theoretical framework to evaluate locality in terms of the interaction between urbanization, economic growth, and environmental quality, organizing health-related data, researching underlying technologies, and determining the generalizability or contextual adaptability of policy applications. Comparing the newest sub-clusters with sub-clusters including the term “design” indicates the necessity and opportunity to integrate environmental, economic, and social dimensions into a bottom-up multiscale theoretical framework by connecting terminology and concepts that vary according to scale and synthesizing emergent issues into the conventional urban planning realm. These findings will inform decisions regarding funding and investment in scientific research by governments, companies and research institutions.