A systematic literature review on urban governance

This post was written by Zeynep Arica.

Towards A More Interdisciplinary Discussion: Analyzing ‘Urban Governance’ Landscapes

In recent years, the number of studies on the concept of urban governance has risen significantly. Hence, it has become crucial to explore the growing tendencies in these studies and to give a sense of direction to these discussions. In this systematic literature review, we aimed to explore the interdisciplinary setting of urban governance in the literature by looking at the key concepts, subjects, approaches, and geographical focuses of works in different research fields in the social sciences to understand the present and future of the discussions on urban governance. 

We had three objectives: to determine the research fields that include works on urban governance most predominantly, to discover the geographical focus of the discussions on urban governance, and to analyze the interdisciplinary nature of the works within these fields. 

For the initial analysis of the literature on urban governance, we used the database Web of Science and the “Social Sciences Citation Index” (SSCI). The related time span chosen for the systematic literature review was in between the years of 2020 and 2022. The Web of Science search entry: “urban + govern*” was used to determine the related articles on urban governance, under the citation index SSCI. As a result, 484 records of related articles were found to conduct the systematic literature review. In this regard, we have chosen the below listed Web of Science categories for the analysis:

o Environmental Studies – 195 records

o Urban Studies – 195 records

o Geography – 145 records

o Environmental Sciences – 81 records

o Regional & Urban Planning – 78 records

o Public Administration – 37 records

o Political Science – 31 records

o Economics – 25 records

o Sociology – 14 records

The figure below represents an analysis of the Web of Science results in relation to their geographical focuses and shows that the majority of the articles written on the concept of urban governance have been written in China, which is followed by the USA and England. In general, the graph does not explicitly show the countries or regions that have been the subjects of these articles but gives us an idea about which countries or regions have been more in the focus of the discussions on urban governance.

Following the initial analysis, we separated the articles with respect to their research fields and created word clouds using the author keywords to understand the recurring concepts in all the fields. The analysis of the word clouds showed that keywords such as planning, development, policy, sustainability, infrastructure, housing, environment, and participation are becoming more popular within the urban governance discussion from an interdisciplinary point of view. 

Furthermore, we conducted a bibliometric analysis – which is a method for analyzing large volumes of scientific data – using the software tool VOSviewer and the bibliographic data we obtained such as co-authorship, keyword, co-occurrence, citation, bibliographic coupling, or co-citation. Through this analysis, we created cluster groups using bibliographic data like geographical locations and keywords, which helped us to understand the interdisciplinary relationships of the concept of urban governance and where the related discussions are heading towards with respect to the key sources.

As a result of our analysis, we observed that certain themes and topics have become more prominent for the urban governance discussions within the research fields we have chosen between the years 2020 and 2022. These themes were:

o Urban resilience

o Austerity governance

o Climate governance

o Entrepreneurial governance

o Sustainable urban development

Besides, the keywords that have gained more prominence within the same fields revealed the recurring concepts in urban governance discussions. These keywords were:

o Development

o Planning

o Policy

o Sustainability

The above listed repeating themes, topics, and keywords provided us with significant outcomes for the discussions on the works related to ‘urban governance’. Hence, these themes and keywords represent the similarities and correlations among the different urban governance discussions in different research fields. These connections enable researchers to see that there are rising tendencies towards a more interdisciplinary approach in urban governance discussions through a number of leading topics.

In addition to the preliminary findings regarding the research fields, this study showed that the focus on different key concepts and subjects may shift in different geographical areas. We observed that it is possible in different research fields to put more emphasis on certain countries or regions and less on the others. To exemplify, more studies have been carried out about the USA in Geography and Urban Studies fields whereas China is more prominent in the fields of Environmental Studies and Environmental Sciences. Besides, countries such as Brazil or India are more prominent in discussions on informality in Global South.

Finally, we should not disregard the fact that social, political, and economic developments also affect the urban governance discussions in different geographical spaces. For instance, as a result of the post-crisis period, topics such as austerity, municipal indebtedness, privatization, and financialization have caught more attention in the works related to the USA and the Southern European countries while the post pandemic era raised more discussions on public health, health emergencies, and climate change in China.