<p>This paper examines contrasting research orientations in contemporary urban research through a comparative analysis of publication patterns in two established planning journals, the Journal of the American Planning Association and the Journal of Planning Education and Research, and the interdisciplinary journal Nature Cities. Drawing on a systematic bibliometric review, the study assesses spatial variation in research themes, data sources, and methodological approaches across regions and institutional contexts. The findings indicate that traditional planning outlets remain predominantly oriented toward governance, housing, and transportation, with strong emphasis on context-specific planning issues, while Nature Cities places greater focus on sustainability, climate adaptation, and urban resilience through scalable and data-intensive analytical frameworks. The analysis reveals a reconfiguration of knowledge production across selected publication venues, marked by growing convergence between planning and computational urban science alongside persistent challenges related to algorithmic transparency and equity considerations. These patterns point to important implications for theory development, methodological reflection, and interdisciplinary dialogue, and underscore the need for integrative frameworks that connect the contextual grounding of planning research with the analytical capacity of urban analytics in more reflexive and institutionally grounded ways.</p>