Urban branding and circular economy: a bibliometric analysis

There is an emergence of circular economy concepts and growth and multiplicity of urban labels adopted by cities. Therefore, this paper aims to analyze the correlation between the use of urban branding strategies and the circular economy. A review was carried out on the concepts of the different urban labels and then a bibliometric survey was carried out relating these brandings with the circular economy. The initial analysis relied on the use of 14 urban brandings, six of which did not show bibliometric results and, for this reason, were excluded from further analysis. As a result, the correlation between the circular economy and these 8 urban brandings-sustainable cities, smart cities, resilient cities, green cities, low-carbon cities, ecocities, inclusive cities, and knowledge cities-has been assessed in more depth. Among all combinations with "circular economy", the terms "smart cities" and "sustainable cities" these were the ones that presented the greatest recurrence in the literature, with 45.4% and 38% of the total of articles (108). Environmental science appears as the knowledge area with the highest quantity of publications. Italy, the Netherlands, and China stood out as the countries with a greater number of articles related to the subject. In general, the results point to a trend of plurality of urban brandings, which are adopted according to the characteristics and strategy of each city. It is also worth mentioning that, in many cases, these brandings are not competitors, because in many opportunities they can and must be worked on a complimentary basis by cities.