Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

We examine topics’ interactions and changes of contexts in all publications in three general U.S.-based planning journals from 1992 to 2021. We do so using Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT), a deep learning language model. We find 12 interrelated research topics. Moreover, the meaning and focal points of those topics have shifted over time. These shifts reflect evolving societal priorities, with long-standing themes such as urban form, economic development, and resilience increasingly intersecting with concerns around equity, governance, and sustainability. The results offer insights to empower cross-domain collaboration and adaptive responses to emerging urban challenges.

Keywords

planning journals semantic analysis topic modeling deep learning large language modeling

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Ayambire

R. A.

Moos

. 2024. “Inclusive Futures? A Systematic Review of Social Equity in Scenario Planning.” Journal of Planning Education and Research. Advance online publication, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1177/0739456X241238684.

Binkley

Lawrie

. 2010. “Information Retrieval Applications in Software Maintenance and Evolution.” In Encyclopedia of Software Engineering, edited by P. Laplante, 231–42. Taylor & Francis.

Blei

D. M.

Lafferty

J. D.

. 2007. “A Correlated Topic Model of Science.” Annals of Applied Statistics 1 (1): 17–35. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4537420

Chandra

Kulkarni

. 2022. “Semantic and Sentiment Analysis of Selected Bhagavad Gita Translations Using BERT-Based Language Framework.” IEEE Access 10: 21291–315. https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2022.3152266.

De Bruijn

Gerrits

. 2018. “Epistemic Communities in Urban Self-Organization: A Systematic Review and Assessment.” Journal of Planning Literature 33 (3): 310–28. https://doi.org/10.1177/0885412218794083.

Devlin

Chang

M.-W.

Lee

Toutanova

. 2019. “Bert: Pre-Training of Deep Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understanding.” In Proceedings of the 2019 Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies, Volume 1 (Long and Short Papers) , 4171–86. Association for Computational Linguistics. https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/N19-1423.

Fang

2015. “Do Clusters Encourage Innovation? A Meta-Analysis.” Journal of Planning Literature 30 (3): 239–60. https://doi.org/10.1177/0885412215589848.

Fang

. 2022. “How Are Economic Development Districts Riding the Waves of Economic Development Strategies?” Economic Development Quarterly 36 (4): 371–84. https://doi.org/10.1177/08912424221126918.

Fang

Ewing

. 2020. “Tracking Our Footsteps: Thirty Years of Publication in JAPA, JPER, and JPL.” Journal of the American Planning Association 86 (4): 470–80. https://doi.org/10.1080/01944363.2020.1766994.

10.

2024. “Natural Language Processing in Urban Planning: A Research Agenda.” Journal of Planning Literature 39 (3): 395–407. https://doi.org/10.1177/08854122241229571.

11.

Zhai

. 2023. “Using Natural Language Processing to Read Plans: A Study of 78 Resilience Plans From the 100 Resilient Cities Network.” Journal of the American Planning Association 89 (1): 107–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/01944363.2022.2038659.

12.

Goldstein

H. A.

Carmin

. 2006. “Compact, Diffuse, or Would-Be Discipline?: Assessing Cohesion in Planning Scholarship, 1963–2002.” Journal of Planning Education and Research 26 (1): 66–79. https://doi.org/10.1177/0739456X05282353.

13.

Goldstein

Maier

. 2010. “The Use and Valuation of Journals in Planning Scholarship: Peer Assessment Versus Impact Factors.” Journal of Planning Education and Research 30 (1): 66–75. https://doi.org/10.1177/0739456X10375944.

14.

Haghani

Sabri

De Gruyter

Ardeshiri

Shahhoseini

Sanchez

T. W.

Acuto

. 2023. “The Landscape and Evolution of Urban Planning Science.” Cities 136 (104261): 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2023.104261.

15.

Kanjirangat

Mitrovic

Antonucci

Rinaldi

. 2020. “SST-BERT at SemEval-2020 Task 1: Semantic Shift Tracing by Clustering in BERT-Based Embedding Spaces.” Proceedings of the Fourteenth Workshop on Semantic Evaluation 214–21. https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2020.semeval-1.26.

16.

Klosterman

R. E.

2011. “Planning Theory Education: A Thirty-Year Review.” Journal of Planning Education and Research 31 (3): 319–31. https://doi.org/10.1177/0739456X11413601.

17.

Kwon

Nguyen

M. T.

. 2024. “Four Decades of Research on Racial Equity and Justice in Urban Planning.” Journal of Planning Education and Research 44 (4): 2127–39. https://doi.org/10.1177/0739456X231156827.

18.

Lund

B. D.

Wang

. 2023. “Chatting About ChatGPT: How may AI and GPT Impact Academia and Libraries?” Library Hi Tech News 40 (3): 26–9. https://doi.org/10.1108/LHTN-01-2023-0009.

19.

Pinson

2004. “Urban Planning: An ‘Undisciplined’ Discipline?” Futures 36 (4): 503–13. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2003.10.008.

20.

Ramani

Bloom

. 2021. “The Donut Effect of COVID-19 on Cities.” National Bureau of Economic Research. https://doi.org/10.3386/w28876.

21.

Wang

Hulse

Von Meding

Brown

Dedenbach

. 2020. “Conceiving Resilience: Lexical Shifts and Proximal Meanings in the Human-Centered Natural and Built Environment Literature from 1990 to 2018.” Developments in the Built Environment 1, 100003. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dibe.2019.100003.

22.

Zhang

Nie

Zhao

Chen

. 2024. “Achieving Semantic Consistency Using BERT: Application of Pre-training Semantic Representations Model in Social Sciences Research.” SSRN. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5043698

23.

Zhong

Ding

Liu

Tao

. 2023. “Can Chatgpt Understand Too? A Comparative Study on Chatgpt and Fine-Tuned BERT.” arXiv (arXiv:2302.10198). https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2302.10198.

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

0.00 MB

0.95 MB

Journey of Urban Concepts: Mapping 30-Years of Shifts in the Meanings of Key Topics in Journal of American Planning Association,Journal of Planning Education and Research,and Journal of Planning Literature

Abstract

Keywords

Get full access to this article

References

Supplementary Material