Urban quality in the city of the future: A bibliometric multicriteria assessment model

Abstract Assessing the quality of urban areas is considered as a difficult task. The main reason lies in the multidisciplinary nature of the field, and in the complexity of components that must be accounted for. This study aims to identify the most discussed topics in literature by weighing the main themes currently under investigation and defining their potential interdependencies. We provide a theoretical and conceptual framework to analyze contributions in literature on urban quality assessment in the city of the future by combining a bibliographic analysis and a multi-criteria approach. In detail, we reviewed literature and implemented a methodological approach, which combines a bibliometric analysis and the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). According to the principal keywords “urban quality assessment” and “future city”, we initially identified in SCOPUS database 1024 articles and a selection of most cited sub-keywords. Then we fine-tuned the research according to a sequential approach. We performed a statistical analysis on preliminary results and implemented a relative AHP model to obtain a priority ranking of the most relevant sub-keywords. This approach allows for analyzing articles, by combining multiple keywords with the identification of the degree of relationship among the different sub-keywords with respect to the main topic.