Scientometrics and systematic review of global theoretical texts on the implementation and execution of urban development plans

Document Type : Research article

Authors

1 school of architecture and environmental design , Iran university of science and technology, Tehran, Iran.

2 School of Architecture and environmental Design, Iran University of Science and Technology, Tehran, Iran.

10.22059/jurbangeo.2023.355311.1795

Abstract

ABSTRACT
Over the past 50 years since the first research in the field of urban development implementation plans, there has been a noticeable absence of a comprehensive literature review on this topic in the global arena. This article provides a textual analysis related to the subject of urban development implementation plans, to identify important and recurring themes alongside analyzing the relationships between authors, journals, and countries in this field. Along with the bibliographic analysis, documents related to the field of urban development implementation plans were reviewed to identify influential indicators in their implementation. To this end, 456 scientific articles were extracted from the Scopus scientific database as of October 28th, 2022, and analyzed using scientometric software. These analyses include examining author keywords, country co-authorships, journal bibliographic coupling, and author co-citations. In this study, 74 final indicators were identified as the most recurrent indicators in this field. The bibliographic analysis also produced several noteworthy results. The United States is the most active country in this field, with a link strength of 40 and 176 articles. Berke, P. is the most influential author in this field, with a link strength of 1623 and 99 citations. Among the journals examined, "Land Use Policy" has the highest bibliographic coupling strength of 84, and the "Journal of the American Planning Association" has the highest number of documents related to this field, with 22 documents; finally, among the identified.
Extended Abstract
Introduction
The implementation of urban development projects has been a neglected topic in public policy research, despite its critical importance in ensuring the success of such projects. While there have been numerous studies on the factors that contribute to the success or failure of policy implementation, there has been a lack of systematic reviews on the subject of implementation as a whole. This study aims to address this gap in knowledge by providing a comprehensive overview of the implementation process of urban development projects. This study aims to address this gap in knowledge by providing a comprehensive overview of the implementation process of urban development projects. The study begins by collecting and categorizing existing research in the field, focusing on three main questions:
-What are the key indicators for successful implementation?
-What are urban journals and articles' current trends and performance?
-How do countries and researchers collaborate in this area?
The study also examines the relationships between authors, publishers, and different types of documents through bibliographic analysis. Ultimately, this study highlights the need for further research and a more structured approach to understanding the implementation process of urban development projects.
 
Methodology
This study examined the literature related to implementation and evaluation plans in urban and land use planning. The authors used the Scopus database to extract and collect data, focusing on combining the keywords "implementation-plan" and "evaluation-plan" in the keywords, abstracts, and titles. Initially, 621 studies were extracted, but 456 articles were selected as the final database after filtering out non-article documents. The authors observed a general upward trend for studies from 1968 to 2022, with a significant increase in the slope of the trend from 2007. However, a slight decrease in studies was observed in 2021 and 2022, possibly due to the global pandemic and the emergence of new related topics. The authors used a four-stage process to analyze the bibliographic subject of the study, including simultaneous occurrence analysis, co-authorship analysis, bibliographic coupling analysis, co-citation analysis, content analysis, and thematic analysis. The authors identified the selected articles' research objectives, methodologies, findings, and main themes and sub-themes. Overall, this study provides a comprehensive analysis of the literature on implementation and evaluation plans in urban and land use planning.
 
Results and discussion
This research aims to comprehensively analyze the implementation and execution of urban development plans using bibliometrics and systematic analysis. The study considers evaluation as a crucial part of the implementation process and seeks to answer three fundamental questions. Firstly, it identifies effective indicators of implementation and execution globally. Secondly, it examines the trends and performances of new articles and urban journals. Thirdly, it investigates the pattern of cooperation among countries and researchers.
The study identifies 74 general indicators that significantly impact the implementation process of urban plans. The results show that "performance evaluation," "effectiveness," "land use," "zonation," "participation," "program quality," and "implementation program" are critical indicators in this area. The study also highlights the importance of evaluation in the discussion of program implementation and its separability from the implementation process.
Using the scientometric software VOSviewer, the study analyzed 68 keywords related to the bibliographic topic. "Program evaluation" obtained the first place, followed by "Program implementation" and "Program quality." The co-authorship analysis based on author items revealed that Berke, P. has the highest number of citations and link strength. Additionally, the study found that 72 countries have research in this field, with 22 countries having at least 5 citations that were clustered into 5 clusters by the software. The "land use policy" journal had the highest link strength, and the "Journal of the American planning association" had the highest number of documents related to this field.
In conclusion, the study provides valuable insights for policymakers and researchers interested in urban development planning. It comprehensively examines the implementation and execution of urban development plans, identifies effective indicators, and investigates the pattern of cooperation among countries and researchers. The study highlights the importance of evaluation in the implementation process and its separability from the implementation process.
 
Conclusion
The main goal of this research was to fill the gap in research on the implementation and execution of urban development projects in the field, as no systematic review of the topic has been conducted from a global perspective since the first research in this field about half a century ago. Only in some studies, such as those by Talen (1996), Oliveira & Pinho (2010), Rudolf & Grădinaru (2017), has the evaluation of implementation been systematically reviewed, or the systematic review of experiences in a specific urban area, such as the review of various experiences in the Beijing urban area (Chu, 2020). In this research, with the comprehensive approach that the evaluation of implementation is an integral part of the overall process of implementing and executing urban development projects, this process has been examined from the perspective of bibliometrics and systematic analysis of this field. The main difference of this research, which makes it completely new, is firstly having a comprehensive approach to the implementation field, where program evaluation is only an important part of its structure, and secondly, using the scientometric software VOSviewer for the first time in this field. In essence, the conclusive outcomes of this investigation were entirely novel and exhibited some partial congruences with antecedent studies in the domain of appraising and discerning indicators. Significantly, this research has conferred a systematic appraisal of the literature concerning the urban implementation and execution of projects, which is an unprecedented contribution. It should be acknowledged that this is an initial survey of data intended to offer a comprehensive outlook on this scholarly field, and thus it is subject to certain limitations, such as its confinement to the Scopus database. As such, it is recommended that future research endeavors encompass an analysis of additional databases and undertake comparative evaluations of the results.
Funding
There is no funding support.
 
Authors’ Contribution
Authors contributed equally to the conceptualization and writing of the article. All of the authors approved thecontent of the manuscript and agreed on all aspects of the work declaration of competing interest none.
Conflict of Interest
Authors declared no conflict of interest.
 
Acknowledgments
 We are grateful to all the scientific consultants of this paper.

Keywords

References

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Geographical Urban Planning Research (GUPR)
Volume 11, Issue 2
August 2023
Pages 173-200

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