Sustainable cities: a critical review of global scientific production and its epistemic asymmetries
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.22320/07190700.2025.15.02.06Keywords:
sustainable cities, urban planning, scientific publications, documentary analysis, cultural inequalityAbstract
This article presents a critical review of scientific literature on sustainable cities published between 2015 and 2025 in the Scopus and Web of Science databases. Based on a corpus of 5,155 articles, a mixed-method approach—combining bibliometric, thematic, and relational analysis- is applied to examine dominant topics, collaboration patterns, epistemological gaps, and emerging concepts. The results reveal a research field highly concentrated in the Global North, marked by a prevalence of technical-strategic approaches and low levels of effective international collaboration. At the same time, innovative lines of research are identified, opening the way for a more critical, pluralized, and situated agenda on urban sustainability.
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