Regional Development and Sustainability: Systematic Review and Bibliometric Analysis

The purpose of this work is to perform a systematic review and a bibliometric analysis of publications on regional development and sustainability, two increasingly important concepts in economic, environmental, social, and academic forums in all world countries. The study was carried out under the concept of scientific mapping, using bibliometrics to observe the interrelations between disciplines, fields, professions, or documents. The study was done in two stages: a bibliometric analysis and a network analysis. First, a WoS search was performed, and bibliometric indicators were reviewed. In the second step, the network was constructed through the analysis of co-citations, which were compared with the similarity tree. These documents are divided into three categories: the root of the source document (called hegemonic or classic); the backbone of the document involved in the development of the current knowledge of the subject called trunk or structural; the last one is the collection of the latest developments called leaves or perspectives of the document work. Finally, three perspectives identified in the following research fields are presented: planning and territorial development, evaluation and ecosystems, and China and urban development.