---
title: "Urbanization research: papers, trends and top journals"
description: "From 2017 to 2026 (so far), the keyword “urbanization” appeared in 1,477 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in economics (1,021), management (121) and health economics and policy (100)."
url: https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/urbanization
markdown_url: https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/urbanization.md
license: CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)
share_text: "From 2017 to 2026 (so far), the keyword “urbanization” appeared in 1,477 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in economics (1,021), management (121) and health economics and policy (100). (as of 2026-11-05)"
data_url: https://scholar4ai.com/data/rankings.json
updated: 2026-11-05T06:02:37+09:00
window: 2026-10-07 to 2026-11-05
source: OpenAlex (CC0)
---

# Papers on “urbanization”

[Browse research topics](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/directory/page/7.md)

Research on “urbanization” in the 480 tracked journals: papers per year and category, the journals, institutions and countries publishing it, the keywords studied with it and its most-cited papers. It is not among the most frequent keywords of the last 30 days, so this page has no list of its latest papers.

Back to the ranking: https://scholar4ai.com/rankings/keywords.md

## Key findings

- From 2017 to 2026 (so far), the keyword “urbanization” appeared in 1,477 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in economics (1,021), management (121) and health economics and policy (100).
- 189 of them were published in 2025, against 107 in 2017.
- Since 2023, the institutions with the most of these papers were Chinese Academy of Sciences (18), Azerbaijan State University of Economics (16) and Xi'an Jiaotong University (15).
- The journals publishing most of them were Land Use Policy (85), Resources Policy (78) and Journal of the Knowledge Economy (36).
- The most-cited of them is “Moving towards a sustainable environment: The dynamic linkage between natural resources, human capital, urbanization, economic growth, and ecological footprint in China” (Resources Policy, 2020), with 1,194 citations.

## Papers per year

*Papers per publication year and category*

| Category | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 (so far) |
|---|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|
| [Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/economics.md) | 83 | 93 | 94 | 111 | 104 | 99 | 121 | 119 | 117 | 80 |
| [Management](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/management.md) | 4 | 8 | 5 | 6 | 15 | 17 | 13 | 30 | 18 | 5 |
| [Health Economics and Policy](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/health-economics-and-policy.md) | 7 | 13 | 14 | 8 | 10 | 12 | 8 | 9 | 7 | 12 |
| [Operations Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/operations-research.md) | 6 | 6 | 4 | 5 | 2 | 13 | 11 | 10 | 8 | 11 |
| [Finance](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/finance.md) | 0 | 5 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 6 | 16 | 27 | 15 |
| [Statistics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/statistics.md) | 4 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 6 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 5 | 3 |
| [AI](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/ai.md) | 0 | 1 | 1 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 4 | 3 |
| [Information Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/information-systems.md) | 1 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 0 |
| [Tourism and Hospitality](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/tourism-and-hospitality.md) | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 1 | 2 |
| [Higher Education and Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/higher-education-and-research.md) | 1 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 3 |
| [Marketing](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/marketing.md) | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 3 |
| All categories | 107 | 129 | 123 | 142 | 146 | 146 | 164 | 194 | 189 | 137 |

## Where the papers come from

*Journals with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Journal | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [Land Use Policy](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/land-use-policy.md) | 85 |
| 2 | [Resources Policy](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/resources-policy.md) | 78 |
| 3 | [Journal of the Knowledge Economy](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/journal-of-the-knowledge-economy.md) | 36 |
| 4 | [Finance research letters](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/finance-research-letters.md) | 25 |
| 5 | [Economic Analysis and Policy](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/economic-analysis-and-policy.md) | 22 |
| 6 | [Energy Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/energy-economics.md) | 21 |
| 7 | [Energy Policy](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/energy-policy.md) | 19 |
| 8 | [International Review of Economics & Finance](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/international-review-of-economics-finance.md) | 18 |
| 9 | [World Development](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/world-development.md) | 17 |
| 10 | [Socio-Economic Planning Sciences](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/socio-economic-planning-sciences.md) | 16 |

*Institutions with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Institution | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [Chinese Academy of Sciences](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/chinese-academy-of-sciences.md) | 18 |
| 2 | Azerbaijan State University of Economics | 16 |
| 3 | [Xi'an Jiaotong University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/xi-an-jiaotong-university.md) | 15 |
| 4 | [Peking University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/peking-university.md) | 12 |
| 5 | [Renmin University of China](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/renmin-university-of-china.md) | 11 |
| 6 | [Wuhan University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/wuhan-university.md) | 11 |
| 7 | İstanbul Nişantaşı Üniversitesi | 11 |
| 8 | European University of Lefke | 10 |
| 9 | [Nankai University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/nankai-university.md) | 10 |
| 10 | [Fudan University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/fudan-university.md) | 9 |

*Countries with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Country | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | China | 344 |
| 2 | United States | 60 |
| 3 | India | 55 |
| 4 | United Kingdom | 53 |
| 5 | Turkey | 49 |
| 6 | Australia | 31 |
| 7 | Pakistan | 30 |
| 8 | Italy | 27 |
| 9 | France | 22 |
| 10 | Germany | 21 |

*Keywords with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Keyword | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [China](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/china.md) | 132 |
| 2 | [economic growth](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/economic-growth.md) | 105 |
| 3 | [CO2 emissions](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/co2-emissions.md) | 82 |
| 4 | [foreign direct investment](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/foreign-direct-investment.md) | 43 |
| 5 | [environmental sustainability](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/environmental-sustainability.md) | 39 |
| 6 | trade openness | 39 |
| 7 | [regional heterogeneity](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/regional-heterogeneity.md) | 36 |
| 8 | [human capital](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/human-capital.md) | 35 |
| 9 | [sustainable development](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/sustainable-development.md) | 32 |

## Most-cited papers

*Most-cited papers since 2017*

| # | Citations | Per month | Title | Journal | Published | Authors |
|---:|---:|---:|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1,194 | 15.2 | [Moving towards a sustainable environment: The dynamic linkage between natural resources, human capital, urbanization, economic growth, and ecological footprint in China](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resourpol.2020.101677) | [Resources Policy](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/resources-policy.md) | 2020-04-11 | Zahoor Ahmed, Muhammad Mansoor Asghar, Muhammad Nasir Malik et al. |
| 2 | 1,007 | 11.4 | [Do green technology innovations contribute to carbon dioxide emission reduction? Empirical evidence from patent data](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2019.06.010) | [Technological Forecasting and Social Change](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/technological-forecasting-and-social-change.md) | 2019-06-17 | Kerui Du, Pengzhen Li, Zheming Yan |
| 3 | 873 | 13.2 | [Heterogeneous green innovations and carbon emission performance: Evidence at China's city level](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eneco.2021.105269) | [Energy Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/energy-economics.md) | 2021-04-28 | Le Emily Xu, Meiting Fan, Lili Yang et al. |
| 4 | 731 | 7.1 | [Introduction to land use and rural sustainability in China](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2018.01.032) | [Land Use Policy](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/land-use-policy.md) | 2018-04-09 | Yansui Liu |
| 5 | 622 | 7.1 | [Modelling for insight: Does financial development improve environmental quality?](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eneco.2019.06.025) | [Energy Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/energy-economics.md) | 2019-07-01 | Alex Opoku Acheampong |

## Cite this page

Scholar4AI. (2026). Papers on “urbanization”. Journal and Conference Research Rankings. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/urbanization

```bibtex
@misc{scholar4ai-keywords-urbanization,
  author = {{Scholar4AI}},
  title = {Papers on “urbanization”},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/urbanization}},
  urldate = {2026-11-05},
  note = {Journal and Conference Research Rankings; data from OpenAlex (CC0); licensed CC BY-NC 4.0}
}
```

License: CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).