iScience
Volume 25, Issue 11, 18 November 2022, 105297
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Article
An overview and thematic analysis of research on cities and the COVID-19 pandemic: Toward just, resilient, and sustainable urban planning and design

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2022.105297Get rights and content
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Highlights

  • We provide an overview and thematic analysis of research on cities and COVID-19

  • We identify six thematic areas, including air quality and environmental factors

  • We highlight some under-explored areas that need to be further studied in the future

  • We discuss issues for guiding a more just, resilient, and sustainable recovery

Summary

Since early 2020, researchers have made efforts to study various issues related to cities and the pandemic. Despite the wealth of research on this topic, there are only a few review articles that explore multiple issues related to it. This is partly because of the rapid pace of publications that makes systematic literature review challenging. To address this issue, in the present study, we rely on bibliometric analysis techniques to gain an overview of the knowledge structure and map key themes and trends of research on cities and the pandemic. Results of the analysis of 2,799 articles show that research mainly focuses on six broad themes: air quality, meteorological factors, built environment factors, transportation, socio-economic disparities, and smart cities, with the first three being dominant. Based on the findings, we discuss major lessons that can be learned from the pandemic and highlight key areas that need further research.

Subject areas

Environmental issues
urban planning
human geography

Data and code availability

Any additional information required to reanalyze the data reported in this paper is available from the lead contact upon request. This paper does not report original code.

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