Ecological Indicators 121 (2021) 107102

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Ecological Indicators
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolind

Review

Urban sustainability assessment: An overview and bibliometric analysis

Ayyoob Sharifi
Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Hiroshima University, Higashi-Hiroshima 739-8530, Japan
Hiroshima University, Graduate School of Advances Science and Engineering, Hiroshima University, Higashi-Hiroshima 739-8530, Japan
Network for Education and Research on Peace and Sustainability (NERPS), Hiroshima University, Higashi-Hiroshima 739-8530, Japan

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Following the recognition of the significance of urban areas for achieving sustainable development in the late
Sustainable development 1980′ s, first studies on ‘urban sustainability assessment’ were published in early 1990s. Since then, the field has
Urban sustainability grown rapidly, with over 300 papers published annually in recent years. The main objective of this study is to
Sustainability assessment
present a bibliometric analysis of about thirty years of research on urban sustainability assessment. The literature
Cities
database includes 3877 articles published in the Web of Science. VOSviewer and SciMAT are two science
Indicators
Bibliometrics mapping software tools that were utilized for this purpose. VOSviewer is utilized to detect major focus areas and
to identify influential authors, publications, and journals using various network analysis techniques such as term
co-occurrence, co-citation, and bibliographic coupling. Also, SciMAT is used to understand how the intellectual
base of the field has evolved over time and what are the major themes that have contributed to this evolution. For
this purpose, the study interval was divided into four sub-periods (i.e., 1991–2000; 2001–2009; 2010–2015; and
2016–2020). Results show that this field has initially been mainly focused on few themes but has later become
more diversified to acknowledge the multi-dimensional characteristics of urban sustainability. Despite this,
environmental aspects are still dominant and major socio-economic issues such as equity, justice, and public
engagement are not well represented. Sustainable development indicators, energy, green infrastructure, water,
land use, and urban design are major thematic areas, with the first three playing more important roles in
structuring the development of the field. This study can be used as a point of reference for those interested in
gaining more knowledge about urban sustainability assessment and its evolution.

1. Introduction
The significance of cities for achieving sustainability has been
recognized since the publication of the Brundtland Report in 1987
(Brundtland, 1987). The need for promoting urban sustainability was
further emphasized in the 1992 Rio Declaration on Environment and
Development (UN, 1992). Ever since, pursuing urban sustainability has
been high on the agenda of scientists and policy makers and it has been
emphasized in major international reports and policy frameworks. The
Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC AR4) published in 2007 was particularly effective in
highlighting the significance of cities (IPCC, 2007). Consequently, a
separate chapter was allocated to cities in the Fifth Assessment Report
(AR5) that demonstrates strong linkages between urban sustainability
and climate change mitigation and adaptation (Seto et al., 2014).
Additionally, the Rio + 20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable
Development highlighted cities as one of the major thematic areas that
must be prioritized for transition towards sustainable development1.
During the conference, international programs such as the C40 initia­
tive2 demonstrated the important roles that cities can play in promoting
sustainability and achieving climate change adaptation and mitigation
targets. Other noteworthy factors that have provided further momentum
to urban sustainability are the publication of the New Urban Agenda
(Habitat, 2017), and the inclusion of urban sustainability in policy
frameworks such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
(UNSDG, 2015). In fact, SDG No.11 explicitly calls for “making cities
and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable”. This
increasing attention to cities and their role in achieving sustainability is
not surprising since more than 50% of global population currently lives
in cities and cities account for around 70% of global CO2 emissions
(UNDESA, 2018). Moreover, these shares are expected to continue to
increase in the foreseeable future (UNDESA, 2018).

E-mail address: sharifi@hiroshima-u.ac.jp.

1
https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/rio20.
2
https://www.c40.org/.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2020.107102
Received 19 April 2020; Received in revised form 14 October 2020; Accepted 18 October 2020
Available online 29 October 2020
1470-160X/© 2020 The Author. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
A. Sharifi
Concurrent with the increasing attention to urban sustainability,
numerous efforts have also been made to develop indicators, assessment
methods, assessment tools, and rating systems for mainstreaming sus­
tainability in urban planning and development. This is evidenced by the
vast body of research published over the past three decades on this topic.
Since sustainability is a normative concept, these efforts are broad in
nature and are pertinent to various scales ranging from projects to
neighborhoods, cities, and city regions (Cohen, 2017; Kaur and Garg,
2019; Phillis et al., 2017). The widespread interest in urban sustain­
ability assessment can be explained by the fact that assessment often
provides multiple benefits such as enabling planners and policy makers
to track progress towards achieving goals, improving transparency and
accountability, raising awareness, streamlining the development pro­
posal approval processes, and facilitating better-informed decision
making (Sharifi, 2019a). If applied early in the design and planning
process, urban sustainability assessment can also provide opportunities
for different stakeholders to share their ideas and raise their concerns
about the future of the development. More importantly, early applica­
tion of well-designed assessment processes can help identify unsus­
tainable actions and offer guidance on how to avoid lock-in into
undesirable development pathways. This is important since, if devel­
oped inappropriately, the newly built urban infrastructure will make it
more difficult to achieve sustainability and climate stabilization targets
(Creutzig et al., 2016).
As the number of publications in this area continues to grow rapidly,
several review papers have been published to synthesize the existing
knowledge. These papers mainly focus on some specific aspects of urban
sustainability assessment; for instance, indicator-based approaches to
sustainability assessment (Hiremath et al., 2013), tools and toolkits
developed for assessing urban sustainability (Aguiar Borges et al., 2020;
Ameen et al., 2015b; Kaur and Garg, 2019; Phillis et al., 2017; Sharifi
and Murayama, 2013; Wangel et al., 2016), and methodological and
thematic focus of the sustainability assessment literature (Cohen, 2017).
However, the rapid pace of research in this area is outstripping the ca­
pacity to cover various aspects of urban sustainability assessment in a
single review paper and this is probably the main reason for the lack of a
comprehensive analysis of the literature. Furthermore, a comprehensive
review of urban sustainability assessment is challenging since sustain­
ability is a multi-faceted notion and the existing literature often spans a
diverse range of disciplines (Diaz-Lopez et al., 2019). One possible so­
lution to overcome these kinds of challenges is to use bibliometrics that
offers tools to evaluate outputs of large numbers of publications (Cobo
et al., 2011a). As Cobo et al. (2011a) explain, bibliometrics is often used
for performance analysis and/or science mapping. The former is mainly
concerned with examining performance metrics related to different
objects such as authors, universities, journals, and countries; while the
latter is mainly focused on mapping the structure of a research field,
visualizing its thematic evolution, and unpacking the complex re­
lationships between its sub-fields.
Against this backdrop, the main objective of this paper is to provide a
broad overview of about three decades of literature on urban sustain­
ability assessment by using bibliometric analysis techniques. Specific
objectives are to identify influential authors, sources, and countries; to
understand major thematic focus areas and methodological approaches,
and to analyze the thematic evolution of the field. This is, therefore,
different from the existing reviews on urban sustainability assessment
that were earlier discussed. In other words, it complements existing
review articles that mainly use systematic review techniques to examine
specific aspects of urban sustainability assessment. Results of this study
can be utilized for different purposes. They can be used by interested
target groups to better understand existing tools, methods, and ap­
proaches for assessing urban sustainability; can inform interested re­
searchers of key tools, journals, and publications that can serve as points
of reference for better understanding of the field; and may also be used
to understand key areas that need to be more explored in the coming
years.
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Ecological Indicators 121 (2021) 107102
This paper is divided into four sections. Materials and methods are
explained in the next section. The findings are reported and discussed in
Section 3. And, finally, the last section concludes the study by high­
lighting the main implications and making some recommendations for
future research.
2. Materials and methods
As shown in Fig. 1, three major steps were taken, namely database
creation, analysis using the VOSviewer software tool, and analysis using
the SciMAT tool (Sharifi et al., 2020b). These steps are briefly explained
here.
2.1. Database creation
To meet the objectives mentioned in the previous section a broad-
based literature search string was designed that includes terms related
to sustainability at various urban scales ranging from district to neigh­
borhood and to the whole city. When designing the search string, it was
also considered that different variants of terms such as evaluation,
measurement, rating, ranking, indicator, and index may have been used
in the literature (see the Supplementary Data for the detailed search
string).
The search in the titles, abstracts, and keywords of English docu­
ments (research papers, review papers, letters, and commentaries)
indexed since 1900 in the following Web of Science (WoS) databases
returned 7998 resources on 26 February 2020: Science Citation Index
Expanded, Social Sciences Citation Index, and Emerging Sources Cita­
tion Index. As some of these resources may not be relevant to urban
sustainability assessment, the filtering functions of the WoS were used to
refine the search results and only keep sources directly relevant to urban
sustainability. For instance, sources belonging to the medical and agri­
cultural fields were excluded. At the end of this process 3877 articles
were remained in the database. The ‘Full Record and Cited References’
of these resources were exported under the ‘Tab-delimited’ and ‘Other
Reference Software’ file formats to be, respectively, used for biblio­
graphic analysis using the VOSviewer and SciMAT software tools.
2.2. Analysis using VOSviewer and SciMAT
Over the past two decades various software tools have been devel­
oped for the purpose of science mapping and bibliographic analysis
(Cobo et al., 2011b). Despite having differences, all these tools are
designed to represent the complex and dynamic relationships that exist
between disciplines, documents, authors, journals, countries, etc. in a
simple manner. It is beyond the scope of this paper to discuss details
about different tools and their components. For further information,
interested readers are referred to (Cobo et al., 2011b).
In the previous section it was mentioned that the specific objectives
are to identify influential authors, sources, and countries; to understand
major thematic focus areas and methodological approaches, and to
analyze the thematic evolution of the field. SciMAT is used to achieve
the latter objective. To meet the other objectives, I have used
VOSviewer.
VOSviewer is a widely-used tool that has a user-friendly graphic
interface and is useful for creating bibliometric networks of journals,
authors, publications, organizations and countries (Sharifi, 2020). These
networks are developed based on co-authorship, co-occurrence, citation,
bibliographic coupling, and co-citation analyses (Van Eck and Waltman,
2009). This tool is particularly useful for the purpose of this study as its
term co-occurrence analysis allows identifying key research topics and
detecting major research clusters related to urban sustainability
assessment. To enhance accuracy of the analyses, VOSviewer allows
introducing a thesaurus file that can be used for data cleaning by
merging different variants of terms, author names, etc. (Van Eck and
Waltman, 2020). Accordingly, a thesaurus file was developed and used
A. Sharifi
Fig. 1. Major steps taken for the purpose of this research (Sharifi et al., 2020b).
in this study (e.g., LCA and Life Cycle Assessment refer to the same term
and were merged as LCA). In addition to co-occurrence analysis, the
‘bibliographic coupling by country’3 analysis was used to identify the
most prominent countries that have generated research in this field and
visualize their relationships. Also, the ‘co-citation’ analyses were used to
identify the most prominent journals and publications and display their
clusters. The software manual is freely available4 and includes further
information about the procedures for data analysis and mapping (Van
Eck and Waltman, 2020). The graphic outputs of VOSviewer include
nodes and links, the sizes of which are proportional to the frequency of
the objects in consideration (e.g., terms) and the strength of links be­
tween them, respectively.
SciMAT is also a freely available tool5 that is used to understand the
thematic and conceptual evolution of urban sustainability assessment
within the past three decades. This tool allows science mapping within a
longitudinal time frame. For this purpose, it is needed to identify several
desired time periods based on the major development that may have
affected the evolution of the field. As discussed earlier, the importance of
urban sustainability and its assessment was first recognized in the late
1980′ s. This is reflected in our literature database as the first papers on
this topic were published in 1991. Therefore, the time frame used is this
review is from 1991 to 2020. This was then divided into four time pe­
riods considering major developments in the field. The first period
(1991–2000) is when the field was still nascent and sectoral focus was
still dominant. The second period (2001–2009) is characterized by more
attention to holistic approaches to assessment. This was facilitated by
the advances made in decision support tools and assessment schemes
that were designed to promote better attention to multi-sectoral ap­
proaches (e.g., tools developed by LEED, BREEAM, etc.) (Diaz-Lopez
et al., 2019). In addition, the importance of cities for solving global
sustainability issues was better recognized during this period as evi­
denced by more attention to urban issues in the fourth assessment report
of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (IPCC, 2007).
The third period (2010–2015) is when holistic approaches to urban
sustainability assessment were better advanced. The most noteworthy
development is related to the rapid development and uptake of tools
3 izontal and vertical axes corresponding to network centrality and den­
“A bibliographic coupling link is a link between two items that both cite the
same document. A co-citation link is a link between two items that are both
cited by the same document” Van Eck and Waltman, 2020. VOSviewer Manual
for VOSviewer version 1.6.14. Leiden University, Leiden University. P.26.
4
https://www.vosviewer.com/.
5
https://sci2s.ugr.es/scimat/.
3
Ecological Indicators 121 (2021) 107102
developed for assessment at neighborhood and city levels (Sharifi and
Murayama, 2013). These are diverse set of assessment tools belonging to
the LEED, BREEAM, and CASBEE family, and other tools such as Circles
of Sustainability, Living Community Challenge, EcoDistricts, Eco­
Quartier, Green Star Communities, DGNB for Districts, and STAR
Communities that have been used in many parts of the world (Merino-
Saum et al., 2020; Sharifi and Murayama, 2013). Furthermore, urban
sustainability research received additional momentum after the impor­
tance of cities was increasingly recognized in science and policy events,
frameworks, and publications such as the Rio + 20 Summit and the fifth
assessment report of the IPCC (Seto et al., 2014). Finally, the last period
(2016–2020) is when research on urban sustainability received addi­
tional momentum following the publication of the New Urban Agenda
and the adoption of SDGs at the UN General Assembly in September
2015. As discussed earlier, the role of cities is explicitly acknowledged in
SDG No.11.
Details on SciMAT modules and algorithms can be found in Cobo
et al. (2012) and only some major points are explained here. Although
this tool has various features, in this study it has just been used to
identify similarities and relationships between the terms using the co-
occurrence analysis. Before doing the analysis the ‘word group manual
set’ option of the software was used to clean the raw data and merge
synonymous and/or misspelled terms. The software allows using author
keywords and/or keywords added by the indexing database for the co-
occurrence analysis. As authors are often only allowed to add a
limited number of keywords, here, all keywords were used in the anal­
ysis (i.e., a combination of author keywords and those added the
indexing databases). Following the recommendation of Cobo et al.
(2011a) the ‘equivalence index’ was used for normalizing keyword co-
occurrence frequencies. As for clustering algorithm, the ‘simple cen­
ters algorithm’ was used. This is argued to an effective algorithm for the
purpose of clustering in the context of term co-occurrence analysis
(Cobo et al., 2011a). Finally, to quantify the importance of different
keyword clusters, the following citation-based bibliographic measures
are used: h-index, average citations, and total citations.
Four major outputs of the analysis are strategic diagrams (Fig. 2a),
thematic networks (Fig. 2b), evolution map (Fig. 2c), and overlay graph
(Fig. 2d). A strategic diagram is a two-dimensional plane with the hor­
sity, respectively (Cobo et al., 2011a). Centrality is used to measure the
degree of interaction between networks. A theme with higher centrality
value has stronger external connections to other themes and has played
a more important role in the development and evolution of the field. In
A. Sharifi
Fig. 2. Strategic diagram, thematic network, evolution map, and overlay graph (Cobo et al., 2011a).
contrast, density is used to measure the degree of interaction within a
network. A theme with higher density value has stronger internal ties
and is more developed (Cobo et al., 2011a). Depending on their position
on the plane, four types of themes can be identified as described by
(Cobo et al. (2011a, p. 150).
• “Themes in the upper-right quadrant are both well developed and
important for the structuring of a research field. They are known as
the motor-themes of the specialty, given that they present strong
centrality and high density. The placement of themes in this quad­
rant implies that they are related externally to concepts applicable to
other themes that are conceptually closely related”.
• “Themes in the upper-left quadrant have well developed internal ties
but unimportant external ties and so are of only marginal importance
for the field. These themes are very specialized and peripheral in
character”.
• “Themes in the lower-left quadrant are both weakly developed and
marginal. The themes of this quadrant have low density and low
centrality, mainly representing either emerging or disappearing
themes”.
• “Themes in the lower-right quadrant are important for a research
field but are not developed. So, this quadrant groups transversal and
general, basic themes”.
As can be seen, interpretation of the “emerging or declining” themes
requires a considerable knowledge of the field.
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Ecological Indicators 121 (2021) 107102
Thematic networks complement strategic diagrams and show how
each theme of the strategic diagram relates to the other themes in the
network. The size of nodes in the network is proportional to the fre­
quency of documents associated with the keyword and the thickness of a
link connecting two nodes is proportional to the equivalence index
(Fig. 2b) (Cobo et al., 2011a). According to Cobo et al., (2011a, p. 149)
“the equivalence index, eij is defined as: eij = c2ij /ci cj , where cij is the
number of documents in which two keywords I and j co-occur and ci and
cj represent the number of documents in which each one appears. When
the keywords always appear together, the equivalence index equals
unity; when they are never associated, it equals zero”.
The evolution map (Fig. 2c) is used to understand thematic evolution
of the field over the study periods. The size of nodes is proportional to
the number of documents corresponding to each theme and the thick­
ness of the links is proportional to the inclusion index that indicates the
extent to which the keywords of two themes in consecutive periods are
identical. It will be equal to 1 if all the keywords of a theme in a period
are contained in the corresponding theme in the following period (Cobo
et al., 2011a). Each theme represents several related keywords and the
dominant keyword is selected by the software as the theme label. Solid
links indicate that two connected themes share identical labels or the
label of one is part of the other. In contrast, dotted links indicate that the
consecutive themes share keywords that are different from the theme
labels (Cobo et al., 2011a).
Finally, the overlay graph is used to understand the level of stability
between two consecutive periods. The horizontal arrow shows the
A. Sharifi
number of shared keywords. The number in parentheses refers to the
Similarity Index between the periods. The outgoing arrow on the top
represents the keywords belonging to the first period that are not
included in the second period. On the contrary, the incoming arrow
refers to the number of newly introduced keywords that only exist in the
second period.
3. Results and discussions
In this section first an overall bibliometric analysis of all the 3877
articles is provided (Section 3.1). This includes information on the
publication trends, as well as, the results of term co-occurrence,
bibliographic coupling, and co-citation analyses. These are mainly
based on the outputs of the VOSviewer software tool. Following this,
results of the conceptual evolution analysis using SciMAT are presented
in Section 3.2.
3.1. Overall bibliometric analysis
3.1.1. Publication trends
An overall increasing trend in the number of articles published per
year can be observed in Fig. 3. During the first decade, only less than 20
articles have been published annually. A considerable increase can be
seen in the following decade, but the growth rate is still slow. In contrast,
a remarkable increase in the number of annually published articles can
be observed during the third decade (i.e., the third and fourth periods).
In particular, since 2015, on average, more than 500 articles have been
published annually. In fact, since 2018, the number of annual publica­
tions is larger than the cumulative number of articles published before
2010. As mentioned earlier, this could be explained by the increasing
recognition of the important role of cities for achieving global sustain­
ability. Integration of city-scale assessments in the IPCC reports (since
the 5th Assessment Report), publication of the New Urban Agenda, and
the adoption of SDGs may have contributed to this rapid increase in the
number of publications.
3.1.2. Term co-occurrence analysis
Term co-occurrence is a bibliographic analysis method that is used to
detect major focus areas and identify topics/sub-topics that co-occur
more frequently and can, therefore, be considered as thematic clus­
ters. These clusters are identified by the software based on the strength
Fig. 3. The number of articles published per year. Note that the lower number of articles in 2020 is because the literature search for the purpose of this paper was
done in early 2020. An upward trend is expected for 2020 and the following years.
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Ecological Indicators 121 (2021) 107102
of connection between the terms. In other words, terms that co-occur
frequently form a cluster. However, clustering alone is not enough for
interpreting the results. An important issue to be mentioned is that the
interpretation of the results requires knowledge about the field because
the software does not provide additional information on why the terms
have co-occurred. Also, the interpretations should be viewed with
caution since only information about co-occurrence is not enough to
understand the nature of relationships between the terms. Result of this
analysis for a minimum threshold of 35 keywords is shown in Fig. 4. The
size of each node is proportional to the number of times the term has
been used. Proximate nodes are more closely linked to each other and
thickness of the links connecting them is proportional to the strength of
the connection. Quantitative data related to the top-25 highly-occurred
terms is presented in Table S1 (supplementary data). Terms such as
sustainability, indicators, climate change, cities, management, systems,
framework, energy, and China, feature higher values of occurrence and
total link strength, indicating that they have received more attention
and are highly linked with the other terms. As the terms ‘sustainability’
and ‘cities’ were included in the search string, their higher values are
expected. While this is an expected result, these terms are kept in the
analysis because excluding them may result in the omission of important
terms that are linked to them. It can be seen that these terms and others
such as climate change are located near the borders of the clusters,
indicating that they are cross-cutting terms with strong linkages to
different clusters and themes. Higher values for the terms ‘indicator’,
‘system’ implies that a lot of attention has been paid to developing in­
dicator systems. This is in consistent with the results of previous reviews
that show high attention has been paid to indicator-based systems
(Hiremath et al., 2013; Sharifi and Murayama, 2013). Higher values of
the terms ‘climate change’ and ‘energy’ indicate the significance of cities
for addressing climate change issues (Seto et al., 2014). The term
‘management’ may indicate the importance of urban sustainability
assessment for informing urban management decisions (Merino-Saum
et al., 2020). China appears as a major keyword, indicating the large
number of studies conducted on sustainability assessment of Chinese
cities (Geng et al., 2012; Wu et al., 2016).
Fig. 4 shows that three major clusters can be identified. The largest
cluster (red color) includes 48 terms and is mainly related to land use
and transportation planning, green infrastructure, and ecosystem ser­
vices. The linkages to terms such as ‘health’, ‘urban heat island’, and
‘mitigation’ may indicate that sustainability measures related to land
A. Sharifi
Fig. 4. The term co-occurrence map (node size is proportional to the number of terms).
use, transport, and green infrastructure can provide multiple co-benefits
(Sharifi, 2021). The second cluster (green color) has 41 items and is
focused on two major areas related to energy and methodological as­
pects of sustainability assessment. There is a clear focus on energy
consumption and its associated GHG emissions. Related terms are
closely linked to the term ‘model’ that may indicate the dominance of
modelling approaches for assessing energy consumption in cities
(O’Neill et al., 2012). Proximity and strong linkages between these
terms and the term ‘China’, shows that special attention has been paid to
the energy implications of rapid urbanization in China (O’Neill et al.,
2012). As for the methodological approaches, it can be observed that
dominant approaches are Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Multi-Criteria
Analysis (MCA), Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), and indicator-
based impact assessment (Singh et al., 2012). The last cluster (in blue)
is consisted of 24 terms and mainly covers issues related to policy and
management. This cluster has strong links to the indicator-based
assessment approaches and frameworks, indicating that they can func­
tion as decision support tools.
3.1.3. Prominent journals
As mentioned earlier, “co-citation is a link between two items that
are both cited by the same document” (Van Eck and Waltman, 2020, p.
26). Here, co-citation analysis is utilized to identify journals that have
had more influence on the development of the field. Result of the co-
citation analysis for sources that have been at least 200 times cited is
shown in Fig. 5. Here, size of the nodes is proportional to the number of
citations. Quantitative details related to the citation count and total link
strengths can be found in Table S2. Results show that journals such as
Journal of Cleaner Production, Landscape and Urban Planning, and
Ecological Economics have had higher influence. Three major clusters
can be detected that are closely consistent with the clusters identified
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Ecological Indicators 121 (2021) 107102
from the term co-occurrence analysis. The largest cluster (red color)
includes journals that are mainly focused on issues related to the
ecological and environmental dimensions of urban sustainability. Some
journals in this cluster such as Landscape and Urban Planning, Land Use
Policy, and Urban Forestry and Urban Greening have major focus on
issues related to land use planning and green infrastructure. The cluster
in green includes journals that have a major focus on urban policy and
decision making. The last cluster that includes highly influential jour­
nals such as Journal of Cleaner Production, Energy Policy, Building and
Environment, and Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews has a
clear emphasis on energy-related issues. It is worth noting that this co-
citation analysis is based on the citation performance of the 3877 arti­
cles included in the review database, but based on the co-citation
analysis that considers documents that have been cited by them (i.e.,
their list of references). Obviously, it is possible to also create a list of
influential journals by only including citation data related to the 3877
articles in the database. Results of that analysis are shown in Table S3. It
can be observed that the results of these two types of analyses are
similar, with some changes in the order of journals. For instance,
Ecological Indicators that was ranked 4th when including cited refer­
ences (i.e., co-citation analysis), is ranked 3rd when only considering
articles in the database.
3.1.4. Prominent publications
A similar approach was taken to identify the most influential publi­
cations. Here the unit of analysis is cited references. The output of
analysis by cited references, for a minimum number of 30 citations, is
shown in Fig. 6. Quantitative data related to this analysis is available in
Table S4. This analysis shows that influential publications can be
divided into five major clusters. Three dominant clusters (red, green,
and purple) mainly include documents related to assessment approaches
A. Sharifi
Fig. 5. Result of the co-citation analysis by cited sources (node size is proportional to the number of citations).
and methodologies. Major focus of documents in the red cluster is on
general sustainability assessment methods and indicator-based assess­
ment at the city scale (e.g., (Shen et al., 2011; Singh et al., 2012; Tan­
guay et al., 2010)). Closely related to this cluster, documents belonging
to the blue cluster are mainly related to tools and indicators for assess­
ment at neighborhood and community scales (e.g., (Sharifi and Mur­
ayama, 2013, 2014; Valentin and Spangenberg, 2000)). The cluster in
purple includes two major types of documents that have played foun­
dational roles in the evolution of urban sustainability assessment. First,
documents such as the Brundtland report (Brundtland, 1987) and the
International Organization for Standardization guidelines (ISO, 2006)
that have developed principles for sustainability and its assessment and,
second, documents that have laid the methodological foundation for
sustainability assessment (specifically, Saaty’s theory of AHP (Saaty,
1988), and Zadeh’s theory of fuzzy sets (Zadeh, 1965)). Major emphasis
of documents in the green cluster is ecological footprint and urban
metabolism (e.g., (Kennedy et al., 2007; Odum, 1996; Wolman, 1965)).
Finally, documents in the last cluster (yellow) cover topics related to
green infrastructure and urban ecosystems (e.g., (Costanza et al., 1997;
Oberndorfer et al., 2007; Tzoulas et al., 2007)).
3.1.5. Prominent authors, and countries
The most influential authors can be identified by using ‘cited au­
thors’ as the unit of analysis in the co-citation analysis. The supporting
quantitative data related to this analysis is presented in Table S5. As
Fig. 7 shows, five major clusters can be distinguished according to the
authors’ expertise. These expertise clusters are, to a large extent,
consistent with the clusters identified in the previous analysis. The only
exception is the green cluster that includes authors mainly working on
urban transport (e.g., Todd Litman, Peter Newman, and Reid Ewing).
7
Ecological Indicators 121 (2021) 107102
The cluster in blue consists of authors that have mainly worked on
ecological and environmental accounting (e.g., Howard T. Odum, Sven
Erik Jørgensen, and Mark T. Brown). The main area of expertise of au­
thors in the purple cluster is urban metabolism and ecological footprint
analysis (e.g., Christopher Kennedy, Shu-Li Huang, and Yan Zhang).
Similar to the previous analysis, the yellow cluster is related to green
infrastructure and urban microclimate. This cluster is represented by
authors such as C.Y. Jim, WONG Nyuk Hien, and Timothy Richard Oke.
The red cluster features a wider range of disciplines. However, most
authors in this cluster have some research focus on sustainability
assessment and its methodological aspects (e.g., Thomas L. Saaty, Rajesh
Kumar Singh, and Ayyoob Sharifi). It is worth noting that influential
authors can also be identified by only considering the authors of the
3877 articles in the review database (instead of also taking account of
cited references). The list of top-10 authors identified using this
approach is shown in Table 1.
To understand which countries have contributed more to the
development of the field, bibliographic coupling is used. “A biblio­
graphic coupling link is a link between two items that both cite the same
document” (Van Eck and Waltman, 2020, p. 26). Results of biblio­
graphic analysis for at least 30 documents a country are shown in Fig. 8.
The supporting quantitative data is presented in Table S6. In Fig. 8, size
of the nodes is proportional to the number of publications. China, USA,
England, Italy, and Australia are dominant countries. While developed
countries have made more contributions, it can be seen that a large body
of research has also been produced in developing countries. However,
many countries especially those from Africa are missing. Given the
projected urbanization rates in developing countries (UNDESA, 2018),
more research is needed to better inform the planning process.
Regarding the clusters, while there are some exceptions, close
A. Sharifi Ecological Indicators 121 (2021) 107102

Fig. 6. Results of the co-citation analysis by cited references (node size is proportional to the number of citations).

Fig. 7. Most influential authors (node size is proportional to the number of citations).

collaborations between countries that are geographically proximate can
be observed.
3.2. Conceptual structure and evolution of the field
As explained in Section 2.2, the SciMAT software tool is used to
understand conceptual structure and evolution of the urban sustain­
ability assessment field.
themes of each period into four categories, namely, ‘motor themes’,
‘basic and transversal themes’, ‘highly developed and isolated themes’,
and ‘emerging or declining themes’. Definition of each category is pro­
vided in Section 2.2. Major results related to each period are reported
here. In each strategic diagram the node size is proportional to the
number of articles published during the period. Numerical details
related to other performance measures (e.g., No. of citation, average
citations, or h-Index) can be found in Table S7.

3.2.1.1. First period (1991–2000). As Fig. 9 shows, the intellectual base

3.2.1. Conceptual structure
of the field was still limited and only few major themes emerged from
Strategic diagrams generated from the SciMAT analysis divide major

8
A. Sharifi Ecological Indicators 121 (2021) 107102

Table 1 basis for defining ‘urban sustainability’ that is an important basic term
Highly cited authors. during this period. In fact, it is evident from a collection of ‘urban sus­
Author Citations Documents Citations per Most cited tainability’ definitions provided by Huang et al. (2015) that all defini­
document publication tions are, to a large extent, in alignment with (and inspired by) the
Xiaoling 504 10 50 (Shen et al., 2011) traditional definition of sustainable development outlined in the
Zhang Brundtland report (Brundtland, 1987). Overall, urban sustainability
Yong Geng 485 15 32 (Geng et al., 2012) should ensure a balanced social, economic, environmental, and physical
Ayyoob 443 6 74 (Sharifi and development. More specifically it should ensure that urban development
Sharifi Murayama, 2013)
Dagmar 333 7 48 (Kabisch et al.,
does not exceed the carrying capacity of the natural environment (re­
Haase 2016) gion surrounding the city), capacity of ecosystem services in the city is
Liyin Shen 306 14 22 (Shen et al., 2012) maintained and improved, well-being of the urbanites is ensured, equal
C. Y. Jim, 284 10 28 (Jim and Tsang, access to resources and services is ensured, and security and resilience
2011)
issues are appropriately addressed (Huang et al., 2015). Fig. 9, however,
Jianguo Wu 282 10 28 (Liu et al., 2014b)
Zhifeng Yang 275 10 28 (Zhang et al., 2006) shows that during this period the focus has mainly been on the isolated
Joan 254 9 28 (Martínez-Blanco environmental aspects of sustainability. As a case in point, it can be
RieradeVall et al., 2014) observed that urban ecology and green infrastructure are environmental
Marzia 208 7 30 (Martínez-Blanco themes that are well-developed but without strong external ties with the
Traverso et al., 2014)
other themes.

the analysis. Sustainable development and integrated approach are
motor themes that have played a foundational role in defining the
structure of the field during the first period. Relatively high conceptual
maturity of both themes in this period is not surprising given several
years of efforts during the 1980s and early 1990s to define the notion of
sustainable development and promote integrated assessment ap­
proaches. As a motor theme, ‘sustainable development’ has provided the
3.2.1.2. Second period (2001–2009). As Fig. 10 shows, in this period
the thematic focus of the field is remarkably diversified. This indicates
enlargement of the intellectual base and may indicate a gradual para­
digm shift toward recognizing urban sustainability as a multi-faceted
concept with various social, economic, environmental, and institu­
tional dimensions. Despite this, the environmental dimension remains
dominant and themes related to the other dimensions (e.g., livability or

Fig. 8. Most influential countries (node size is proportional to the number of citations).

9
A. Sharifi
Fig. 9. Major themes of the first period (see Section 2.1 and Fig. 2 for description of the nodes and quadrants).
socio-economic) are still either emerging or isolated. As the strategic
diagram shows, motor themes in this period are sustainable develop­
ment, conservation, urban form, and climate change. Sustainable
development is still the most important theme and is associated with the
largest number of publications and citations (see Table S7). As will be
discussed later, from this period sustainability indicators, assessment
tools, and decision support tools become major constituent elements of
the sustainable development theme. The literature, however, indicates
that during this period urban sustainability indicators and assessment
tools have had a limited scope, mainly focusing on Environmental
Impact Assessment (EIA) and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). EIA and LCA
have been practiced since 1960s to, respectively, assess environmental
impacts of projects and products (Guinee et al., 2011; Ness et al., 2007).
Development and implementation of integrated assessment tools was
mainly limited to the building scale, as evidenced by the improvements
in the development and uptake of tools belonging to the LEED, BREEAM,
and CASBEE families (Haapio and Viitaniemi, 2008). Toward the end of
this period, however, the importance of upscaling assessment became
more recognized and tools such as LEED for Neighborhood Development
(LEED-ND), BREEAM Communities, and CASBEE for Urban Develop­
ment were developed (Sharifi and Murayama, 2013, 2015). This anal­
ysis, however, indicates that research outputs related to these tools have
mainly been reported during the following periods (third and fourth).
Other types of assessment approaches such as Strategic Environmental
Assessment (Ness et al., 2007) and Exergy and Emergy analyses (Liu
et al., 2014a) have also been common during this period, but the stra­
tegic diagram shows that they have had marginal effects on urban sus­
tainability assessment due to limited connections to other themes.
10
Ecological Indicators 121 (2021) 107102
Conservation is an important motor theme that has evolved from the
‘integrated approach’ theme of the previous period and is focused on
important sub-themes such as biodiversity protection and ecosystem
services. Climate change is another motor theme that is a derivative of
the ‘integrated approach’ theme of the first period. The emergence of
this theme could be explained by the growing recognition of the role of
cities in combating climate change since the turn of the century and
following the publication of the fourth assessment report of the IPCC
(IPCC, 2007). As expected, this theme has specifically focused on climate
change adaptation and mitigation and disaster risk management.
Finally, urban form is an important theme that has emerged in this
period. The sub-themes of this theme cover various urban design and
planning topics but are mainly related to low-carbon urban development
through curbing urban sprawl and promoting compact development.
There is ample evidence demonstrating that such measures contribute to
urban sustainability (Sharifi, 2019b).
3.2.1.3. Third period (2010–2015). From this period the number of
annually published articles increased remarkably as shown in Fig. 3.
Thirteen major themes were emerged, with the following themes
standing out in terms of performance measures such as the number of
publication and citation, and the h-index: indicators, energy, and green
infrastructure (see Table S7). Emphasis on these three themes indicates a
major shift in the thematic focus and shows that the field begins to
consolidate around some major themes. Sustainable development is now
evolved into the theme titled indicators that is the most important theme
of this period. This is a major development in the field and can be
interpreted as an increasing interest in adopting indicators and indices
A. Sharifi
Fig. 10. Major themes of the second period (see Section 2.1 and Fig. 2 for description of the nodes and quadrants).
to facilitate a better-informed decision making process (Hiremath et al.,
2013). Indicator systems can also provide multiple other benefits such as
enabling performance monitoring, reducing complexities, and
improving transparency (Sharifi, 2016). The thematic network shown in
Fig. 12a shows that this theme has strong connections to the sub-themes
‘governance’ and ‘decision support tools’. This supports arguments
about the utility of indicators for decision making. The thematic
network also shows that assessment tools, indices and Multi-criteria
Decision Analysis (MCDA) frameworks are important constituent ele­
ments of the ‘indicators’ theme. In fact, during this period tools and
indices developed for assessing sustainability at city and neighborhood
levels became more mature and better adopted by developers and local
decision makers (Dawodu et al., 2017; Mori and Christodoulou, 2012;
Smith and Bereitschaft, 2016). Some tools such as LEED-ND, BREEAM
Communities, and CASBEE for Urban Development have been more
successful in this regard (Sharifi and Murayama, 2014; Smith, 2015).
Another major change is the emergence of the theme energy in the
strategic diagrams from the period. This theme has linkages to many
themes/sub-themes from the previous period, such as exergy and
climate change mitigation. (different themes converged). More attention
of the urban sustainability assessment literature to energy issues in this
period is not surprising given the increasing recognition that cities are
major contributors global energy consumption and different measures
such as better exploitation of renewable energy and enhancing effi­
ciency of urban energy systems is essential for mitigating climate change
(Creutzig et al., 2015; Sharifi and Yamagata, 2016).
Green infrastructure strengthens its position during this period by
becoming a motor theme for the first time. As the thematic network
(Fig. S1) shows, this theme is strongly linked to issues such as climate
change adaptation and mitigation, microclimate regulation, and
ecosystem services. This is in line with the literature suggesting that
11
Ecological Indicators 121 (2021) 107102
urban green infrastructure is essential for achieving sustainability
(Wang and Banzhaf, 2018). Two other motor themes that have shaped
the structure of the field during this period are ‘land use and land cover
change’ and ‘resilience’. The former is mainly concerned with the
important sustainability and climatic impacts of large-scale land use and
land cover changes cause by rapid rates of urbanization (Seto and
Shepherd, 2009). Regarding resilience, it is a concept that was first
introduced into urban studies in early 2000s, but it was not until early
2010s that it gained ground. While distinctions exist between resilience
and sustainability, they can complement each other under some condi­
tions. For instance, improving characteristics such as diversity and
connectivity, adopting participatory governance, and considering cross-
scale dynamics are some resilience-related measures that can also
strengthen sustainability (Elmqvist et al., 2019). During this period
many tools were developed for assessing resilience. However, despite
the complementarity potentials, resilience and sustainability are often
assessed separately (Sharifi, 2016).
3.2.1.4. Fourth period (2010–2015). Interesting insights can be drawn
from the strategic diagram of this period (see Fig. 13). It can be seen that
the field has now reached a good level of maturity, with most themes
being either ‘motor’ or ‘emerging or declining’ themes. Energy, in­
dicators, and green infrastructure maintain and strengthen their posi­
tions as the most important themes. Here, however, ‘energy’ overtakes
‘indicators’ to become the theme with the largest number of publications
and citation. This may indicate that research on urban energy has gained
more momentum during this period. Examining the thematic networks
of these three themes (e.g., Fig. 12 a and b) during the third and fourth
periods shows very similar patterns of focus. In the fourth period ‘China’
emerges as one of the energy sub-themes. This is expectable as many
studies have been published related to energy and associated GHG
A. Sharifi
Fig. 11. Major themes of the third period (see Section 2.1 and Fig. 2 for description of the nodes and quadrants).
emissions of Chinese cities during the past few years (e.g., see (Jing
et al., 2018; Sun et al., 2018)). Regarding the ‘green infrastructure’ sub-
themes, analysis of the thematic networks shows that more attention has
been paid to the health and well-being impacts during this period. It is
also worth noting that in this period green infrastructure is closely
related to conservation which is another motor theme.
Water has been a recurring theme since the first period (see
Figs. 9–11). It, however, became a motor theme during the last period
for the first time. Emergence of water as a motor theme is not surprising
given that it is often a central component of tools and indicator systems
developed for sustainability assessment (Ameen and Mourshed, 2019;
Phillis et al., 2017; Wu et al., 2016). As the thematic network shows
(Fig. S2), this theme is tightly linked to, among other things, resource
management, wastewater management, disaster risk reduction, and
resilience. One important sub-theme is Asia-Pacific cities that may be
interpreted as high attention of the literature to water-related issues in
the coastal urban areas of this region.
Transportation is another newly emerged motor theme that, as its
sub-themes indicate, is mainly focused on reducing vehicle dependency
and transportation emissions through various measures such as
increasing density and developing land use plans that promote accessi­
bility and walkability and discourage vehicle ownership (Fig. S3). It is
closely related to the ‘urban design’ theme that is more focused on the
neighborhood level (Fig. S4). High emphasis on the neighborhood scale
in this theme indicates that neighborhood sustainability assessment
tools (e.g., LEED-ND) are still major contributors to the urban sustain­
ability assessment literature. The large number of papers published on
neighborhood sustainability assessment over the past five years supports
12
Ecological Indicators 121 (2021) 107102
this finding (e.g., (Benson and Bereitschaft, 2019; Pedro et al., 2019;
Vilela et al., 2019)). Finally, a new theme on sustainability trans­
formations has appeared on the strategic diagram that is in line with the
growing recognition of the significance of social, economic, technolog­
ical, and institutional transformations and innovations for achieving
urban sustainability (Grandin et al., 2018; Sharp, 2018). Related to this,
it can also be seen that there is an emerging theme on ‘smart cities’ in the
strategic diagram. While smart city indicators are not yet appropriately
integrated into sustainability assessment tools, some newly developed
tools such as LEED for Cities and Communities have taken steps toward
better integration of smartness concepts and other tools are also ex­
pected to follow suit (Sharifi et al., 2020a).
3.2.2. Keyword changes and conceptual evolution map
The overlay graph (Fig. 14) is used to understand changes in the
number of keywords across the study periods. In addition, it provides
information on the number of shared keywords between two subsequent
periods. As discussed earlier, numbers inside each circle of Fig. 14
indicate the number of all keywords used during the period. Numbers on
the arrows represent the number of keywords shared between two
subsequent periods and those in parentheses indicate stability index (i.
e., fraction of keywords from one period that remain in the following
period). The outgoing arrows represent the number of keywords from
one period that do not exist in the next period and, finally, the incoming
arrows indicate the number of newly added keywords in each period. It
can be seen that the number of keywords has increased remarkably over
time, with the last period having about 37 time more keywords than the
first period. This is a clear indication that, over time, the field has
A. Sharifi
Fig. 12. Thematic network of the theme ‘indicators’ for the 3rd (a) and 4th (b)
periods (see Section 2.1 and Fig. 2 for description of the nodes).
expanded to include a wide array of topics. It is obvious from results
presented in the previous sections that both methodological and the­
matic bases of the field have expanded. In fact, over three decades of
research has contributed to the improved inclusion of different sus­
tainability dimensions in the assessment process (Merino-Saum et al.,
2020). The number of shared keywords between subsequent periods has
also grown rapidly from 55 to 980 that can be interpreted as a certain
level of consolidation in the keywords used in the field. The stability
index values, however, reveal no signs of major changes. In fact, the
number of disappearing keywords is high, meaning that some topics are
ephemeral. Similarly, many new keywords are introduced in each
period, meaning that the field continues to evolve. This is not surprising
given the complex and dynamic nature of urban transformations.
The evolution map (Fig. 15) adds more weight to the argument that
the field of ‘urban sustainability assessment’ has a diverse but
13
Ecological Indicators 121 (2021) 107102
fragmented intellectual base and is characterized by a dynamic evolu­
tion process. Despite this, six major thematic areas, in descending order
of importance are as follows: Sustainable development (indicators),
energy, green infrastructure, water, land use, and urban design. These
thematic areas are, to a large extent, consistent with the term clusters
reported in Section 3.1.2. Performance measures related to these themes
are presented in Table 2. Also, they are often highlighted as major
thematic areas in sustainability assessment tools (Ameen et al., 2015a;
Komeily and Srinivasan, 2015). It is worth noting that these thematic
areas are not mutually exclusive, and some overlaps exist between them.
Also, there are some other important thematic issues that cut across
some of these six thematic areas. For instance, transportation is an
important theme during the second, third, and fourth periods and is
often highlighted in the urban sustainability assessment literature
(Merino-Saum et al., 2020). In Fig. 15 it appears as a major theme during
the second and fourth periods and is also one of the major components of
the “urban policy” theme in the third period. During these periods,
transportation is closely linked to the land use and urban design the­
matic areas. This can be explained by the fact that measures and policies
related to land use planning and urban design can affect transportation
policies and options and vice versa. In fact, such interactions have been
considered in sustainability assessment tools such as LEED-ND.
Of these six major thematic areas, sustainable development (in­
dicators), green infrastructure, and water have been persistent since the
first period. However, development of the others has begun since the
second period. Some major points related to these thematic areas are as
follows:
• As discussed earlier, sustainable development, as the most important
thematic area, was mainly focused on basic issues of sustainability
during the first period (Curwell and Cooper, 1998). In the second
period it became closely linked with indicators and decision support
tools (Tanguay et al., 2010). And since the third period, it has a clear
emphasis on indicators, decision support tools, and assessment tools
(Fig. S5) (Merino-Saum et al., 2020).
• Green infrastructure began as a highly developed but fragmented
theme that evolved into several basic themes, including conservation
and climate change in the second period and then maintained a
stabilized its position as an important theme during the third and
fourth periods (Parker and Zingoni de Baro, 2019) (Fig. S7).
• Energy is a major thematic area that emerged from the second
period. Initially, it was mainly focused on issues such as emergy,
exergy, and LCA (Balocco et al., 2004). Since the third period, it has
gained a strong position in the field and covers various issues related
to energy generation and consumption and associated GHG emis­
sions (Sharifi and Yamagata, 2016) (Fig. S6).
• Water has maintained a stable and relatively important position
since the first period. As discussed earlier, it has gained more
attention in the recent two periods (Byrne et al., 2017) (Fig. S8).
• Land use is a thematic area that is more diverse and less consolidated
compared to the other thematic areas. During the second period it
was mainly focused on land use planning and resource management
(Nuissl et al., 2009). In the subsequent period it become mainly
concerned with land use and land cover change analysis (Sharifi
et al., 2014). And in the last period it has mainly dealt with scenario
making and natural resource protection (Liao et al., 2018) (Fig. S9).
• Finally, the urban design thematic area was initially focused on
urban form and place making during the second period (Forsyth
et al., 2010). Since the third period, however, it has paid more
attention to promoting compact and walkable urban development,
with a clear emphasis on neighborhoods (Sharifi and Murayama,
2013) (Fig. S10).
4. Conclusions
Cities around the world are increasingly recognizing the enormity of
A. Sharifi
Fig. 13. Major themes of the fourth period (see Section 2.1 and Fig. 2 for description of the nodes and quadrants).
Fig. 14. The overlay graph.
challenges caused by the combining forces of rapid urbanization and
climate changes. Various measure such as assessing sustainability can be
taken to face these challenges. In particular, assessment allows tracking
progress toward achieving sustainability targets and can provide urban
authorities with guidance on how to remain on sustainable trajectories.
The main objectives of this study were to provide an overview of the
literature on urban sustainability assessment; to identify major focus
areas and key sources and authors; and to examine how the field has
evolved thematically. Results show that a vast body of literature has
been published over the past three decades, with a rapid surge in the
number of publications since 2015. It was discussed that better recog­
nition of urban sustainability in policy frameworks such as SDGs and the
New Urban Agenda has likely contributed to this trend.
Results of the bibliometric analysis using the VOSviewer software
tool showed that existing research is mainly focused on issues related to
land use, transportation, green infrastructure, energy, and GHGs. These
results indicate that more attention has been paid to the environmental
14
Ecological Indicators 121 (2021) 107102
dimensions and are consistent with previous research (Pearsall and
Pierce, 2010; Sharifi and Murayama, 2013). In fact, major socio-
economic issues such as equity, environmental justice, and public
engagement are missing or not well-represented in the findings of the
VOSviewer and the SciMAT analyses. The promising result, however, is
that related themes such as social sustainability and capacity building
have emerged during the last period. This may indicate that the
importance of socio-economic dimensions for achieving sustainability is
increasingly recognized. While more attention to environmental issues is
likely to be due to the need to accelerate progress on climate action, it
should be noted that sustainability is a multi-dimensional notion and
more balanced approaches that also address socio-economic and insti­
tutional aspects are needed (Komeily and Srinivasan, 2015). Such
balanced approaches are also needed to meet the SDG targets related to
equity and justice. Accordingly, further attention to socio-economic
dimensions in future research is recommended. The bibliometric anal­
ysis also identified influential sources and publications in this area that
A. Sharifi Ecological Indicators 121 (2021) 107102

Fig. 15. The thematic evolution of the field (node size is proportional to the number of papers).

15
A. Sharifi Ecological Indicators 121 (2021) 107102

Table 2 systematic reviews. While further advances in text mining and machine
Performance of the thematic areas. learning techniques may enhance their utilities (for instance, by allow­
Thematic areas Periods Number of Number of h- ing analysis the full texts of the articles in addition to the titles, abstracts,
documents citations Index and keywords), currently they are not capable of providing in-depth
Sustainable P1 11 321 7 analysis and should be complemented by systematic reviews. For
development P2 119 5746 54 instance, the term co-occurrence clusters are developed only based on
(indicators) P3 326 9724 52 the number of times two terms are co-occurred and does not provide any
P4 723 4895 29 information on the nature of relationships between those two terms. The
Total 1179 20,686 142
Energy P1 – – –
trends identified from the science mapping can, however, guide
P2 12 1029 11 designing such detailed reviews. Detailed reviews are also needed
P3 216 33,306 45 because these software tools are mainly paying attention to quantitative
P4 765 5250 28 metrics such as the number of publications or citation count and fail to
Total 993 39,585 84
consider quality issues. For instance, they do not have algorithms to
Green infrastructure P1 3 252 3
P2 49 3268 40 distinguish publications and/or authors based on the quality of journals
P3 158 6147 47 and associated citations. This may result in a situation where, for
P4 418 3068 33 instance, an author that gets his/her works frequently published and
Total 628 12,735 123 cited in less known and less impactful journals receives similar recog­
Water P1 6 326 5
P2 14 576 10
nition as an author that publishes fewer articles in high-profile and
P3 86 2776 29 highly impactful journals and his/her citations are also from highly
P4 258 1558 20 impactful journals/publications. We highlight this as a shortcoming for
Total 364 5236 64 the tool developers to address in the future version. Overall, this study
Land use P1 – – –
has gone some way towards improving our understanding of the liter­
P2 44 3661 32
P3 78 2347 25 ature on urban sustainability assessment. However, further research is
P4 171 1381 29 required in order to better understand more specific issues such as
Total 293 7389 86 evolution patterns in terms of operationalization of urban sustainability
Urban design P1 – – – assessment tools and frameworks, strengths and weaknesses of different
P2 22 1699 20
approaches, and opportunities and challenges that should be addressed
P3 46 1785 24
P4 138 998 16 for mainstreaming sustainability assessment in urban planning and
Total 206 4482 60 development. Future research should also explore how emerging themes
(e.g., smart cities as shown in Figs. 13 and 15) can be better integrated
into urban sustainability assessment. It is also worth examining if such
can be used as points of reference by researchers and/or other stake­
integration can improve efficiency and efficacy of the assessment pro­
holders interested in gaining more knowledge about urban sustainability
cess. Finally, it should be noted that only peer-reviewed articles were
assessment.
examined in this research. Grey literature should also be studied in the
Results of science mapping using the SciMAT software tool are in line
future research as it has likely made important contributions to the
with the finding of bibliometric analysis. Additionally, they provide
evolution of urban sustainability assessment. These could include urban
more insights on the intellectual base of the field and how it has evolved
sustainability assessment reports and sustainability indicator frame­
over the study period. Examining four periods (1991–2000; 2001–2009;
works published by municipalities, planning departments, non-profit
2010–2015; and 2016–2020), it was found that the in the first three
organizations, planning consultants, and other agencies. Currently,
periods the intellectual base of the field has been diverse but frag­
tools such as VOSviewer and SciMAT can only process documents that
mented, but some signs of consolidation can be observed in the last
are indexed in scientific databases such as the WoS or Scopus. Such
period. Diversity of the intellectual base is not surprising given the
databases only archive peer-reviewed literature. Therefore, it is required
multi-faceted and dynamic nature of urban sustainability. Results show
to develop databases to also archive bibliographic details of high-quality
that this field has mainly evolved around six main thematic areas,
grey literature. This would facilitate gaining better awareness of policy-
namely, sustainable development (indicators), energy, green infra­
related research and activities.
structure, water, land use, and urban design. Of these, the first three
have played more important roles in structuring the development of the
Declaration of Competing Interest
field. As discussed earlier, more attention to energy and green infra­
structure can be explained by the need to accelerate progress on climate
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
action. Also, the persistent attention to indicators and indicator-based
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
systems is a clear indication of their significance for facilitating
the work reported in this paper.
evidence-based and better-informed decision-making processes. The
SciMAT analysis also confirms that more attention has been paid to
Appendix A. Supplementary data
environmental aspects, at the expense of socio-economic and institu­
tional dimensions. Therefore, such dimensions need to be prioritized in
Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://doi.
the future research. The strategic diagram for the latest period showed
org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2020.107102.
that the importance of sustainability transformations is recently recog­
nized. This is expected to provide more opportunities for integrating
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