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Open research questions in Urban Planning and Governance

916 gap statements mined from Urban Planning and Governance papers in our 7.9M-paper local library, which holds 10,737 papers on the topic — drawn mostly from each paper's own stated research gap, future-work, challenge and limitation notes, and its abstract. The ones listed below are a selection still marked open; each names the study that raised it, with a DOI link where the paper has one.

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What the literature leaves open

  • Three divergent approaches are required for the research: conducting oral history interviews with dispossessed property owners, executing current field studies of BCD users, and scrutinizing private documents from Solidere alongside official governmental communications.

    Neoliberal Phoenix: The Contested Legacy of Solidere’s Post-War Reconstruction of Beirut Central District · 2026 · DOI

  • The paper highlights the need to consider the particular circumstances of pandemic-era migration when discussing disaster-related mobility. The paper notes the challenge of identifying an undeveloped plot from an image and establishing its legal status or liability for a fee.

    Strategic Planning for Urban Sustainability in a VUCA World · 2026 · DOI

  • In doing so, the study addresses a key gap in the literature by moving beyond country-specific cases to offer a synthesised, regional perspective. Future research should build on these comparative studies and integrate the perspectives of residents and municipal actors to more fully capture the lived experience and governance dynamics of these increasingly pervasive urban forms.

    Gated Urbanism in the Middle East: Expert Insights from Jordanian Case Studies · 2025 · DOI

  • Future work should focus on developing transferable, adaptable and integrative participatory models, fostering inter-city learning platforms and networks that enable sharing of methods, outcomes, and innovations, and building coalitions of participation enablers across governance levels, but also from academia and the private sector.

    Spatial justice in participatory planning: an integrated framework and lessons from practice · 2025 · DOI

  • Our study of spatial imaginaries serves not as a modelling of parliamentary space but as an exercise in writing space, and a way of highlighting a basis for its production that has been underexplored in organization studies.

    “We Have a Building That Is More Than a Building”: Spatial imaginaries of the Scottish Parliament · 2026 · DOI

  • Physical interventions alone are insufficient unless they are accompanied by social infrastructures, local services, cultural activation and mechanisms that support continuity over time.

    Urban Regeneration as a Process of Territorial Innovation: Evidence from the Libertà District of Bari (Italy) · 2026 · DOI

  • Shared-resource governance further shows how representative status and formal oversight can remain detached from substantive influence when information access, resource tracing, and enforceable corrective tools are lacking.

    From Residents’ Participation to Effective Co-Creation: Collaborative Governance of Urban Community Spaces in Urumqi, Xinjiang, China · 2026 · DOI

  • At the same time, the limited use of quantitative environmental assessment indicates that the sustainability performance of mall adaptive reuse remains insufficiently measured and represents an important direction for future research.

    From retail decline to sustainable urban transformation: a bibliometric review of shopping mall research · 2026 · DOI

  • The study highlights the need for further research on the construction of urban image and identity in urban development projects.

    PLACE ‐ FRAMING URBANITY : The Case of Kalasatama, Helsinki · 2026 · DOI

  • The study suggests that future research should focus on addressing the limitations of the program. The integration of mobile digital archive technologies is proposed as a potential area of future research.

    Pop-Up Governance: Spatial-Temporal Adaptability of Street-Level Bureaucracy in the Dukcapil on the Street Program in Kuningan Regency · 2026 · DOI

  • The limitations of structural operational capacity are noted as a gap that must be addressed.

    Pop-Up Governance: Spatial-Temporal Adaptability of Street-Level Bureaucracy in the Dukcapil on the Street Program in Kuningan Regency · 2026 · DOI

  • The need to re-embed economic activity within social, ecological, and democratic values. The limitations of growth- and competitiveness-driven urban strategies.

    Transformative adaptation in times of polycrisis: insights from Milan’s New Urban Economies · 2026 · DOI

  • The need to understand how New Urban Economies respond to contradictory conditions through the lens of transformative adaptation. The lack of analysis on the adaptive configurations of New Urban Economies in European cities.

    Transformative adaptation in times of polycrisis: insights from Milan’s New Urban Economies · 2026 · DOI

  • Future research may operationalize the framework empirically by examining its implications for sustainability assessment, spatial planning instruments, and governance accountability mechanisms. Future research may explore the application of the Tawhidic Epistemology of Planning framework in other contexts. Future research may investigate the potential for integrating Islamic epistemology with other planning theories.

    TOWARDS A TAWHIDIC EPISTEMOLOGY OF PLANNING: REFRAMING AL-‘ILM FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOVERNANCE IN MALAYSIA · 2026 · DOI

  • The epistemological foundations of planning theory remain largely implicit. The study identifies a gap in the literature regarding the integration of Islamic epistemology and Western planning theory. The study aims to address this gap through a comparative analysis of Western planning theory and Islamic epistemology.

    TOWARDS A TAWHIDIC EPISTEMOLOGY OF PLANNING: REFRAMING AL-‘ILM FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOVERNANCE IN MALAYSIA · 2026 · DOI

  • The need to understand how urban policy, design rationales, and shifting societal values shape public play spaces and their pedagogical potential. The lack of research on the longitudinal transformation of public play spaces. The need to critically evaluate the pedagogical potential of public play spaces in urban contexts.

    From eco to exploitation: A case study of the transformation and commercialization of an urban play space at Ada Ciganlija · 2026 · DOI

  • The lack of disaggregated data on the evolution of the nightlife industry over time. The impossibility of obtaining the City Hall's database on nightlife venues.

    The implementation of the 15-minute city model in Barcelona and the decline of the city’s nightlife industry · 2026 · DOI

  • Further research should examine the impact of algorithmic systems on urban governance practices. The study of ethical infrastructures and cultural sensitivity in managing sustainable urban development should be continued.

    Philosophical Aspects of Managing Environmental Values in Urbanised Areas: Copenhagen, Shenzhen and Kaunas · 2026 · DOI

  • There is a need to study the fragmentation of the city and the constitution of parallel societies. There is a need to critique Danish urban, housing, and social policies.

    SCHULTZ LARSEN, T., & DELICA, K. N. (2024), Fragmenting Cities: The State, Territorial Stigmatization and Urban Marginality. Edward Elgar Publishing. · 2026 · DOI

  • The review emphasizes the need for further research on the intersectional understanding of GCs as sociopolitical assemblages. The study's findings can inform urban planning and policy-making.

    A Systematic Review of the Global Literature on Gated Communities: A Temporal Perspective · 2026 · DOI

  • The review highlights the need for further research on the intersectional understanding of GCs as sociopolitical assemblages.

    A Systematic Review of the Global Literature on Gated Communities: A Temporal Perspective · 2026 · DOI

  • While the proliferation of community food services (CFS) during the COVID-19 pandemic has been documented as a local survival strategy, its implications for metropolitan-scale theory remain underexplored.

    Beyond individual food spaces: comparative metropolitan segregation and the infrastructural scale of community kitchens in three South American capitals · 2026 · DOI

  • Rajjan Man Chitrakar Department of Business and Construction, Melbourne Polytechnic, Epping Campus, Cooper St & Dalton Rd, Epping, Melbourne, VIC 3076, Australia…

    Public Spaces in Transition: Emerging Perspectives and Future Directions · 2026 · DOI

  • Compare emerging mega-projects using the same analytical lens Leverage digital tools for behavioral mapping, pedestrian analytics, and spatial impact modeling Projects like King Salman Park and Diriyah offer opportunities for comparative assessment using this study’s framework Future analysis should expand into data-driven spatial diagnostics for predictive and evaluative purposes From a theoretical perspective…

    Controlled Openness: How Architectural Agency Remade Public Space and Civic Life in Riyadh’s Oil-Boom Era (1980s–1990s) · 2025 · DOI

  • The challenge of integrating environmental values into urban governance practices. The challenge of considering the consequences of actions for future generations. The challenge of designing algorithmic systems that consider local cultural and ecological contexts.

    Philosophical Aspects of Managing Environmental Values in Urbanised Areas: Copenhagen, Shenzhen and Kaunas · 2026 · DOI

Most-cited papers in Urban Planning and Governance

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Open questions raised by papers listed on this page include: (1) Shared-resource governance further shows how representative status and formal oversight can remain detached from substantive influence when information access, resource tracing, and enforceable corrective tools are lacking (“From Residents’ Participation to Effective Co-Creation: Collaborative…”, 2026); (2) The study suggests that future research should focus on addressing the limitations of the program (“Pop-Up Governance: Spatial-Temporal Adaptability of Street-Level Bureaucracy in…”, 2026); (3) The lack of analysis on the adaptive configurations of New Urban Economies in European cities (“Transformative adaptation in times of polycrisis: insights from Milan’s New…”, 2026); (4) Future research may operationalize the framework empirically by examining its implications for sustainability assessment, spatial planning instruments, and governance accountability mechanisms (“TOWARDS A TAWHIDIC EPISTEMOLOGY OF PLANNING: REFRAMING AL-‘ILM FOR SUSTAINABLE…”, 2026); (5) The lack of research on the longitudinal transformation of public play spaces (“From eco to exploitation: A case study of the transformation and…”, 2026). 916 gap statements have been mined from Urban Planning and Governance papers in our 7.9M-paper local library, which holds 10,737 papers on the topic; the gaps come from whichever of those papers state one. They are mostly the research gaps the authors state and the papers' abstracts, plus future-work, limitations and challenges passages. The ones listed below are a selection still marked open; each names the study that raised it, with a DOI link where the paper has one, so you can read the original claim in context.

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