A bibliometric analysis of urban greenway literature: implications for interdisciplinary research on urban systems

Greenways serve as an interface between human and natural systems across urban environments, and their use has increased in recent years as a means of providing multimodal transportation options and recreational opportunities in urban settings. Many studies have focused on greenways both in terms of their impact on environmental and health factors, yet studies have generally remained siloed within their respective disciplines. Understanding urban greenways in the context of rapid global change, will require a holistic, interdisciplinary view that considers the entire system to develop integrated knowledge. As such, this paper offers a bibliometric analysis of 267 systematically selected documents on urban greenways for the purpose of identifying knowledge gaps and emerging ideas in the literature. Our findings demonstrate that greenway research is rooted in concepts related to landscape architecture and design and lacks a network across research groups. Disciplines interested in social, political, and economic aspects of the urban system were relatively unexplored in the greenway literature. We see opportunities for interdisciplinary research in areas of environmental justice, urban sustainability, and green infrastructure design. We also encourage more interdisciplinary and practitioner collaborations that can further inform our understanding of ecological and social interactions in the built environment.