Urban Planning, Land Governance, and Housing Affordability: A Science-Mapping Review of Recent Literature

Abstract

Housing affordability remains a major challenge for cities and is closely linked to the ways in which urban land and planning systems are governed. Although research on land governance and affordable housing has grown rapidly, the literature is dispersed across disciplines and lacks a clear overview of its thematic organisation. This study provides a bibliometric review of recent research connecting urban planning, land governance, and affordable housing in order to clarify how the field has evolved and how its core themes are structured. The analysis is based on 356 peer-reviewed journal articles indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection and published between 2016 and 2025. Using performance analysis and science-mapping techniques implemented through Biblioshiny and VOSviewer, the study examines publication trends, thematic patterns, and keyword relationships. The findings show a strong rise in publication output after 2020, indicating growing scholarly attention to housing affordability as a central urban policy issue. Keyword co-occurrence analysis identifies several related thematic clusters focused on urban planning, housing policy, land use regulation, governance, and social outcomes, with urban planning acting as an important connecting theme. Temporal analysis suggests a gradual shift from a primary focus on regulatory tools towards greater attention to governance capacity, equity, and sustainability. The study highlights both the progress made in this research area and the need for better conceptual integration and wider geographic representation in future work.