Urban Governance Research in China (2012-2022): Progress and Reflections

Abstract

Since the 18th Party Congress, urban governance has gained more and more academic attention. By combing through the Chinese urban governance research literature in the last decade (2012-2022), this paper aims to describe the current status of research in this field and point out the development direction of future research. After screening 519 core Chinese journals, a comprehensive analysis of qualitative and quantitative methods was conducted with the help of the software Cite Space. The results of the analysis show that, in terms of the construction of "invisible academy" and academic community, the participation in the field of urban governance research is on the rise, but the construction of cooperative network of researchers and research institutions needs to be improved. In terms of research themes, the number of theoretical and motivational studies has increased significantly and accounted for a large number of studies, while value-level studies have received less attention and have limited content; in terms of research types, there are more exploratory and descriptive studies and fewer explanatory studies. Overall, during this decade, the academic community of urban governance research has been gradually improved, the research themes have been refined, and the research types have been enriched. However, there is still a need to further improve the value-level and interpretive research on urban governance and to enhance interdisciplinary communication.