This data article presents a tripartite dataset that formed the empirical basis for a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of the use of city labels denoting sustainable urbanism in the scientific literature (Schraven, 2021). The tripartite dataset was generated using the abstract and citation database Scopus (Elsevier). Dataset A lists 148 city labels denoting different approaches to urban planning and development. It was used to select 35 city labels that specifically address sustainable urbanism (‘sustainable city’, ‘smart city’, ‘compact city’ etc.). Dataset B references 11,337 journal and review articles spanning the period 1990–2019. All retrieved articles contain at least one of the 35 city labels in the title, abstract, and author keywords. This database was used to calculate the frequency of the selected city labels across time, and to analyze the co-occurrences of city labels. It was further used to calculate the future trajectory of scientific outputs using the Logistic Growth Model (LGM). Dataset C entails 22,820 author keywords extracted from across the 11,337 articles. This was used to analyze the co-occurrences of keywords with city labels. The data article describes the methods of data collection and curation, the analysis performed, and the potential for reusing the data for further research. The comprehensiveness of the bibliometric corpus – spanning three decades and 35 city labels – lends itself to further investigation of how sustainable urban development has evolved as a topic in the scientific literature since the 1990s. Furthermore, the robust methodology developed could be adapted to other scientific repositories and, indeed, other research problems and questions.

Over the last few decades, China has seen a steep rise in diverse eco city and low carbon city policies. Recently, attention has begun to focus on the perceived shortcomings in the practical delivery of related initiatives, with several publications suggesting a gap between ambitious policy goals and the emerging realities of the newly built environment. To probe this further, in this article we examine – based on the policy network approach – how the gap between high-level national policies and local practice implementation can be explained in the current Chinese context. We develop a four-pronged typology of eco city projects based on differential involvement of key (policy) actor groups, followed by a mapping of what are salient policy network relations among these actors in each type. Our analysis suggests that, within the overall framework of national policy, a core axis in the network relations is that between local government and land developers. In some cases, central government agencies – often with buy-in from international architecture, engineering and consulting firms – seek to influence local government planning through various incentives aimed at rendering sustainability a serious consideration. However, this is mostly done in a top-down manner, which overemphasizes a rational, technocratic planning mode while underemphasizing interrelationships among actors. This makes the emergence of a substantial implementation gap in eco city practice an almost predictable outcome. Consequently, we argue that special attention be paid in particular to the close interdependency between the interests of local government actors and those of land and real estate developers. Factoring in this aspect of the policy network is essential if eco city implementation is to gain proper traction on the ground.