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Article

Industrial Diffusion Processes in Peri-Urban Environments: A State-of-the-Art Analysis of Current and Future Dimensions

by
Fernando Toro Sánchez
1,
Francisco Javier Castellano-Álvarez
1,* and
Rafael Robina-Ramírez
2
1
Economy Department, University of Extremadura, 10071 Cáceres, Spain
2
Business Management and Sociology Department, University of Extremadura, 10071 Cáceres, Spain
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Urban Sci. 2025, 9(9), 378; https://doi.org/10.3390/urbansci9090378
Submission received: 17 June 2025 / Revised: 16 August 2025 / Accepted: 11 September 2025 / Published: 17 September 2025
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Rural–Urban Transformation and Regional Development: 2nd Edition)
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Abstract

Various scientific disciplines (economics, geography, sociology, urban planning, and environmental sciences) have analysed industrialization processes in peri-urban environments. This has given rise to a wide and diverse bibliography on which this bibliometric study, using the most advanced computer tools, offers a comprehensive overview that helps to structure existing knowledge. To this end, the Web of Science and Scopus databases were used, which, after applying inclusion and exclusion criteria and detecting duplicate works, identified a total of 626 documents involving 1484 authors. The results identify two basic lines of research, each relating to the processes of urbanization and industrialization. They also show that, since the approval of the SDGs by the UN in 2015, studies on industrialization in peri-urban environments have been growing significantly. Chinese scientific output stands out among the proliferation of these works. This study also offers a dynamic view of the lines of work that could experience greater future development and that are associated with the challenges inherent in the processes of urbanization and industrialization. Among the former are problems arising from migration or access to housing; among the latter are the challenges of land use transformation, environmental problems, and those linked to inequality.

1. Introduction

The industrialization processes in peri-urban environments have been studied by a wide range of scientific disciplines, from economics to geography and sociology, as well as urban planning and environmental sciences. This has given rise to a broad and diverse body of literature that needs to be structured in order to provide an overview of the field.
The heterogeneity of approaches and disciplines involved in the analysis of industrialization processes in peri-urban environments is neither new nor recent, but rather has characterized the study of this issue over time. Beyond the period covered by this research (2005–2025), the existing literature offers numerous precedents that constitute evidence of this. For example, Katz and Stark [1], from the perspective of labour and development economics, are interested in rural–urban migration processes in less developed countries. These processes are driven by higher growth expectations in cities, where industries are located. However, their research concludes that such migration processes would continue to occur even without these better prospects for urban growth. Without abandoning the issue of migration, and from the perspective of political science, Solinger [2] analyses the implications of industrialization processes for workers’ migratory movements and respect for their rights. He addresses this issue by comparing the industrialization processes of two developed countries—Germany and Japan—with the Chinese experience.
Geography has been one of the scientific fields that has devoted the most effort to analysing the effects of industrialization processes on the configuration of cities. Among the most frequently cited works is that of Wu [3], who studies the consequences that a process characterized by intense industrialization and the transition from a socialist system to a market economy would have on the restructuring of Chinese cities. Also focusing on Chinese cities, Ding [4] and Deng and Huang [5] examine the impacts of the country’s agrarian reform on urban development and land use. From a very different perspective, and in this case taking as a reference the interaction between rural and urban areas in Western Europe, geographer Antrop [6] studies the profound changes in the ecological functioning of the landscape resulting from urban growth.
These authors provide some of the most frequently cited background literature and are examples of the multidisciplinary approach taken in this field. As mentioned above, if we want to gain an overview of the state of the art, it is essential to structure this knowledge. Although there have been systematic reviews of the literature which, based on bibliometric methods, have examined the economic and regional development of different countries, these works only address industrial development in peri-urban environments tangentially. Some examples of this are the contributions of Dhamija [7] regarding economic development in South Africa, and Malik et al. [8] and Rajkoomar et al. [9], who focus their analyses on the conflict between sustainability and industrial development.
Therefore, given the scarcity of bibliometric studies on industrialization processes in peri-urban environments, as well as the limited explanatory analysis of the main elements of scientific production related to this subject, the main objective of this work is to fill this gap by addressing the following research questions: (1) What is the current state of research on peri-urban industrialization? (2) What is the social and intellectual structure of the state of the art in peri-urban industrialization research? and (3) What are the trending topics and themes within the field of peri-urban industrialization?
This study shows that scientific production related to peri-urban industrialization processes has experienced significant growth in recent years. The approval of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by the United Nations (UN) in 2015 and the launch of China’s Rural Revitalization Strategy in 2018 may represent key milestones that explain both the intensity of scientific production and the national origin of many of the researchers interested in analysing industrialization processes in urban environments from multiple perspectives. Among these, due to their relevance within the existing literature, Chinese authors deserve special mention. A simple ranking of the most cited publications on this topic confirms this observation, revealing the prominence of a small number of scholars such as Long et al. [10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17], Liu et al. [18,19,20,21,22], Li et al. [23,24,25], and Wang et al. [26,27].
The results obtained from the search defined in the following section show that a major line of research focuses on the study of urbanization processes from different perspectives. For example, Jedwab et al. [28] and Goodfellow [29], in their analyses of developing countries, question the traditional factors used by the classical literature to explain urban growth in response to rural emigration; Huston [30] analyses the environmental consequences of land use changes due to urban expansion; Bosworth [31] explores the causes of what he terms “counter-urbanization” in the United Kingdom; and Alves et al. [32] examine the drivers of urbanization in major Portuguese cities.
However, in addition to this general line of research, in the context of European Union policies, discussions on industrialization processes and their impact on the interaction between rural and urban environments employ a distinct approach. Within this approach are the works of Kay [33] on the contribution of agriculture to economic development, as well as those of Castellano-Álvarez et al. [34] and Castellano-Álvarez and Robina Ramírez [35] on the effects of various Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) reforms. In the context of European rural revitalization, two particularly prolific areas of research are those focused on the development model promoted by the LEADER Initiative [36,37], and on the role of rural tourism as a driver of economic development [38,39,40,41].
The following section outlines the methodological aspects of this study. The third section presents the research results, structured according to the research questions, and the fourth and final section discusses these results and outlines the main conclusions of the study.

2. Materials and Methods

Taking as a reference the work of Sánchez-Serrano et al. [42], who specialize in conducting bibliometric analyses, this research develops a review methodology that prioritizes rigor and the ability to generate results that allow for drawing significant conclusions regarding the issues under study. The documents are analysed based on the PRISMA criteria [42] and through a systematic literature review (SLR) process [43]. Based on the results obtained from the search conducted on 21 April 2025, the analysis process is summarized in the stages shown in Figure 1.
As shown in Figure 1, the first phase of the analysis process consists of planning the search. This study uses the Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus databases, which, as repositories containing an extensive selection of academic journals and covering world-renowned, high-impact publications [44], enhance the quality and reliability of the research. Visser et al. [45] argue that WoS is preferable to other bibliographic databases in terms of data quality, more so than Scopus and other databases, where data references are not standardized and the ranking algorithm is less efficient. However, Scopus allows exporting up to 2000 documents at a time in text format with the maximum information collected from the metadata, whereas WoS allows only up to 500 in the same way. In the context of the present study, this is considered sufficient due to the inclusion and exclusion criteria applied (Table 1).
Once the databases have been selected, the second phase involves determining the direction of the study. To do this, the search criteria are defined, the documents are filtered according to the adopted quality standards, and the analysis collection is determined by excluding terms that deviate from the focus of the study [46]. Once the search term “Urban Rural Industrialization” was defined, the first data extraction from the WoS database yielded 1003 document references, which, after applying the exclusion criteria described in Table 1, were reduced to a final selection of 482. For the Scopus database, 1668 documents were initially selected, which were ultimately reduced to a total of 309.
As the databases used contain overlapping documents, it is necessary to merge them in order to eliminate duplicate metadata. This process is carried out semi-automatically using Biblioshiny version 4.4.2. To do this, once the text file from one of the databases (WoS or Scopus) has been loaded into the tool, the Convert function is applied, and the file is exported to bibliometric format respecting all the original metadata information (Bibliometrix format). The same step is then performed with the text file from the other database to be merged, thereby obtaining the corresponding Bibliometrix file. The next step is facilitated by the merge collections command, which incorporates the files to be combined. As a result of this process, 155 duplicates were eliminated, leaving a final set of 636 documents analysed in this study, as shown in Figure 1.
In the third and final phase, concerning the analysis of the selected documents, this research makes use of a series of software tools, such as Biblioshiny (bibliometrics visualisation API) and VOSviewer version 1.6.20, for data visualisation, analysis, and evaluation. The Biblioshiny software allows for the import and filtering of data from various databases, the creation of analyses and graphs related to sources, authors, and documents, and grouping by coupling, as well as the analysis of conceptual, social, and intellectual structures. On the other hand, VOSviewer 1.6.20 is a tool that allows the visualisation of bibliometric maps and networks, as well as the performance of co-authorship, co-occurrence, citation, and bibliographic linkage analysis. This software offers network visualisation, overlay, or density, and bibliometric mapping functions based on network data.
Complementarily, a topic-modelling analysis is performed using the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) technique [47], a probabilistic generative model that assumes that each document is composed of a mixture of several topics and that each topic is characterised by a distribution of words. To this end, the selection of the number of topics and their validation according to the criteria of coherence and perplexity [48] are applied automatically using BigML software, which employs heuristics based on the number of documents and other characteristics of the corpus. In the context of the present study, eight topics were identified, with linear training applied to 80% of the dataset.
The information in the bibliometric record is called bibliographic metadata, and its source within each text is obtained from the title of the article, the abstract, the keywords, and the list of references of the article [49]. In the case of the Biblioshiny analysis, these data are located automatically by the software after loading the WoS and Scopus files, whereas, for the LDA analysis, a table is manually generated with the related columns from both databases. Table 2 shows the relationship between the research questions and the research problems posed, together with the software used to address them.

3. Results

3.1. Bibliometric Analysis

Based on the search criteria listed in Table 1 and Table 2, the results from the consultation of the 636 selected articles, which form the basis of this research, are summarized in Table 3. As shown, the period of document selection spans the years 2005–2025. The 636 selected documents (621 articles and 15 book chapters) originate from a total of 325 sources and involve 1484 authors.

3.1.1. Most Relevant Sources and Authors

As shown in Figure 2, research on industrialization processes in urban settings has been a clearly growing line of inquiry since the UN endorsement of the SDGs. A second publishing impulse corresponds to the approval of the Chinese Rural Revitalization Strategy in 2018. Following the pandemic, scientific production has renewed, with approximately 50 articles on this topic published in each of the last three years.
With regard to editorial sources, Figure 3 represents 33% of the accumulated scientific production (212 out of 636 publications) and the importance of each journal according to the number of publications it hosts. Following the criteria of Bradford’s Law [43,44], “Sustainability” (first tranche); “Land” and “Land Use Policy” (second tranche); as well as “Habitat International” and “Journal of Geographical Sciences” or “Cities” (third tranche) stand out.
Figure 4 illustrates the connections between the most cited articles, the authors referenced in the selected papers, and the central themes of the studies related to the industrialization processes analysed. The lines connecting articles with authors indicate an association between them, with the thickness of each line representing the strength of this relationship.
Depending on their orientation, most of the contributions in Figure 4 can be grouped into two main thematic lines:
  • Analysis of connections between concepts related to land use and rural studies: These contributions include Long et al. [10,11,12,13,14], Liu et al. [18,19,20], Li et al. [23,24], and Wang et al. [26].
  • Study of urbanization processes: This line of research includes the work of Wang et al. [27], Poelhekke [50], Yeh et al. [51], Zhou et al. [52], and Li et al. [25]. Within this thematic line, contributions addressing labour mobility between rural and urban areas, such as those by Wu [53], Mohabir et al. [54], and Silveira et al. [55], as well as studies on the consequences of income inequality between these areas, such as Dong and Hao [56], are also relevant.
Figure 5 complements this analysis by showing the most productive authors. Liu, Y. is the author with the highest impact index, followed—at some distance but with a notable difference compared to the rest—by Long, H. and Li, Y. The “h” index is calculated based on the number of citations these authors received within the 636 selected documents, highlighting their relevance. Collectively, the authors listed in Figure 5 account for 7.75% of the total scientific production selected according to the search criteria used.

3.1.2. Reference Countries and Co-Citation Network

Figure 6 shows the scientific output by country, measured according to the nationality of the corresponding author. China emerges as the clear leader in research on urban and rural industrialization, followed by the United States, the United Kingdom, India, Australia, and Italy. In the figure, the width of the red bar indicates that authors of different nationalities collaborated on the article, while the blue bar shows that all authors belong to the same country. Collaborations involving Chinese researchers are primarily with American, British, and Australian researchers. To a lesser extent, there is also collaboration with authors from other Asian countries, including Singapore, Malaysia, and Vietnam.

3.2. Overview of the Social and Intellectual Structure of Research

3.2.1. Most Cited Documents

As Figure 7 shows, among the most cited works in the field of urban and rural industrialization, a significant number of contributions are by Long et al. [10,11,15,16] or Long [17], who, as sole author or in collaboration, focuses on land use and rural spatial planning. In addition to these notable contributions, Kanbur and Zhang [57] also deserve mention as the authors of the third-most-cited article. Other highly cited scholars in the field include Liu et al. [18,19,21], Wang et al. [27], and Lin [58]. Although Lin does not appear among those referenced in the figure, it is important to acknowledge the relevance of his impact factor.

3.2.2. Structure of Authors’ Co-Citation Network

Figure 8 represents the interrelationships between the various authors. In line with what has been noted so far, the image shows the notable influence and fluid interrelationships between Long and Liu.

3.3. Knowledge Synthesis

3.3.1. Term Analysis

Figure 9 shows the word cloud associated with the search performed and identifies the keywords in the bibliometric metadata.
The relevance of the words and their frequencies of occurrence are represented by their size in the previous figure, with several key terms standing out:
✓
“Urbanization” (126 (s); 8.07%): This topic is prominently addressed in journals such as Urban Studies, with contributions from Yeh et al. [51], Wu [53], and Lin [58]; Cities, featuring articles by Zhou et al. [52] and Woodworth [59]; and Habitat International, where Long et al. [12], Peng et al. [60], and Li et al. [61] publish their work.
✓
“Industrialization” (125 (s); 8.04%): Journals paying particular attention to this concept include Land Use Policy, with contributions from Tian [62]; Habitat International, featuring works by Long et al. [12] and Peng et al. [60]; and the Journal of Arid Environments, which published an article by Mavrakis et al. [63].
✓
“China” (118 (s); 7.56%): The prominence of this term in Figure 9 reflects the notable contribution of Chinese authors in the field. Many studies are based on case studies across different regions of China, as evidenced in journals such as Land Use Policy (Long et al. [10,11,13,14], Liu et al. [19,20], Wang et al. [26,27], Yangang and Jisheng [64]), Land (Du et al. [65], Wang et al. [66], Miao et al. [67]), or Journal Environmental Management (Long et al. [15], Liu et al. [18]).
✓
“Environmental monitoring” (60 (s); 3.85%): Although less frequent than the previous terms, this concept is important due to its presence in the keyword map, reflecting studies on the environmental impacts of industrialization and urbanization. Journals focusing on environmental issues include Journal of Environmental Management, Environment International, Science of the Total Environment, Environmental Science and Pollution Research, Sustainability, Regional Studies, and Studies in Comparative International Development. Key contributions include works by Long et al. [15], Song et al. [68], Liu et al. [69], Liv et al. [70], Lu [71], Lin [72], and Pierskalla [73].
Figure 10 complements the keyword map shown in the previous figure and illustrates the dynamic evolution of the most relevant terms appearing in the analysed documents. It also indicates the years in which these terms were most frequently used, thereby demonstrating the novelty of each term.
The figure above shows that some of the most current terms are “land,” “impact,” “areas,” and “agriculture,” whose relevance emerged in 2018, coinciding with the approval of the Chinese Rural Revitalization Strategy. Similarly, the relevance of terms such as “urbanization,” “China,” and “industrialization” is also evident, as well as others that appeared in Figure 9, such as “growth” and “economic growth.” These terms, along with newly relevant ones such as “gender” and “migration,” reappear in the analyses carried out below.
Figure 11 enriches the keyword map by providing a dynamic view of the most frequently used terms in articles published between 2016 and 2022. In the figure, words shown in blue were most frequently used at the beginning of the series, while words in yellow appear most frequently toward the end. The growing prominence of terms such as “rural transformation,” “rural revitalization,” “sustainability,” and “economic growth” toward the end of the series likely reflects the challenges posed by industrialization processes in the Chinese economy.
Moreover, there is a clear consistency in keyword relevance across Figure 9, Figure 10 and Figure 11, with “urbanization,” “industrialization,” and “China” remaining the most prominent terms throughout the period analysed.
In the previous figure, it should be noted that the period 2016–2022 was selected by VOSviewer. This tool automatically applies temporal discriminant analysis to the phase with the highest frequency of the analysed publications. In fact, the aforementioned period coincides with the approval of the SDGs (2015) and the Chinese Urban Strategy Plan (2018).
Figure 12 provides an overview of the groupings of terms by cumulative frequency across the analysed documents. This perspective highlights the approaches applied in the different published articles and illustrates their relative importance within the overall scientific output.
Based on a Pareto chart, the figure above shows the clusters (groups of terms) according to their relevance, ordered by frequency. The following clusters account for 80% of the data frequency: (1) Urbanization–policy–region; (2) growth–urbanization–industrialization; (3) migration–inequality–system; (4) migration–economic–growth; and (5) industrialization–urbanization–China. These clusters are consistent with the relevance of the terms highlighted in Figure 9, Figure 10 and Figure 11, and reflect the research focus on the joint analysis of urbanization and industrialization processes, particularly in an economy such as China’s, where economic growth has been driven by intense industrialization.

3.3.2. Thematic Map and Factor Analysis of Terms

Figure 13 presents the thematic map of the research field, where topics are positioned according to their relevance (density, horizontal axis) and development (intensity, vertical axis) [46]. The map is divided into four quadrants, each with distinct implications:
➢
Driving themes quadrant: These issues exhibit a high degree of development and relevance, including Industrialization and Rural Areas. Compared with Figure 14, these topics appear central and highly debated, and Figure 14 also suggests a relationship between these issues and water quality.
➢
Basic themes quadrant: These issues show a low level of current development but high relevance, including urbanization, China, and cities. The factor analysis in Figure 14 confirms a strong connection between these three terms, and the rightmost portion of the figure links them to environmental monitoring, pollution, and air pollution, indicating a widespread concern among authors regarding the environmental consequences of China’s rapid urbanization processes.
➢
Niche themes quadrant: These issues exhibit a high degree of development but low relevance. As shown in the figure above, the main topics are Growth and Migration. These two issues also appear together in Figure 14, where they interact with other terms such as population and inequality. The connections among these terms highlight specific lines of research and align with some of the clusters identified in Figure 12.
➢
Emerging or declining themes quadrant: These themes show low development and low relevance. The primary topics in this quadrant are economic growth, impact, and model. Figure 14 indicates an increasing relevance of “economic growth”, suggesting that this term may be emerging as a key focus in the field.

3.3.3. Latent Dirichlet Allocation Topic Model (LDA)

As Aguilar-Moreno et al. [74] indicate, this model relies on an unsupervised analysis conducted using the Big-ML tool [75]. The analysis draws on metadata from the WoS and Scopus databases, following the search strategy detailed in Table 1.
Table 4 presents the topics that constitute the identified lines of research and examines their consistency with the themes highlighted by the Factorial Analysis (Figure 14). Additionally, the table links these lines of research with the groups of terms detected in Figure 13 and with the topic clusters shown in Figure 12, while also classifying each line according to its quadrant in the thematic map. This integrative approach allows for a comprehensive understanding of the field, showing how the evolution of keywords, term clusters, and thematic development aligns with the broader structure of research on urban and rural industrialization.
The table above indicates that the analysis identified eight core research topics within the field. Among these, four are considered core topics: (2) urbanization from an environmental impact perspective, (3) urban planning from a local perspective, (4) spatial change and the evolution of human settlements, and (7) sustainable assessment of urbanization. Two driving themes currently occupy a central position in scientific production, addressing the industrial development of rural areas (5) and its social consequences (8). Finally, the analysis shows that migration and socio-environmental dynamics in rural areas (1) constitute a niche topic, while changes in land use and their environmental consequences (6) are classified as an emerging topic.

4. Discussion and Conclusions

This study presents a bibliometric analysis of the existing literature on peri-urban industrialization processes, employing advanced computational tools. In doing so, it offers a distinctive and enriching methodological alternative to the conventional systematic literature reviews previously undertaken [76].
This work has been structured around three research questions. The first of these sought to analyse the current state of research on peri-urban industrialization (RQ1). In this regard, the study shows that research on industrialization in peri-urban environments is currently experiencing significant growth, with Chinese scientific output standing out in particular. As the findings indicate, two milestones help explain the growing scientific interest in this subject: (1) the approval of the SDGs by the UN in 2015 and (2)—particularly in the Chinese case—the approval of the Chinese Rural Revitalization Strategy in 2018.
Regarding the relevance of Chinese researchers within the literature on peri-urban industrialization processes, a brief review confirms their significant influence, particularly through a small group of prolific authors, including Long et al. [10,11,12,13,14,15,16], Liu et al. [18,19,20,21,22], Li et al. [23,24,25], and Wang et al. [26,27,66]. Shen et al. [77], through their analysis of the urbanization process in the Pearl River Delta, were among the pioneers in studying the interaction between urbanization and industrialization processes.
The second research question addresses the social and intellectual structure of research on peri-urban industrialization (RQ2). Most publications are co-authored by researchers from the same country, with limited international collaboration. When such collaboration occurs, Chinese researchers primarily partner with scholars from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia, though collaboration with other Asian countries is also observed. One factor that may explain this limited international collaboration is that many studies by Chinese authors are based on case studies of specific regions or localities within China [78,79,80,81,82,83,84,85,86,87,88,89].
Prominent journals in this field include Sustainability, Land, Habitat International, Land Use Policy, and the Journal of Geographical Sciences. Within the literature on peri-urban industrial development, two basic lines of research emerge, corresponding to urbanization and industrialization processes. However, the current development of these lines differs. As shown in Figure 13, urbanization-related issues are framed as a basic theme, indicating high relevance but lower current development, while industrialization processes constitute a driving theme, reflecting both intense recent development and high relevance.
The third research question focuses on current topics and trends in the field of peri-urban industrialization. In this regard, the study provides a dynamic view of the prominence of different topics in recent years. The challenges posed by industrialization processes in the Chinese economy likely contribute to the growing relevance of issues such as “rural transformation,” “rural revitalization,” “sustainability,” and “economic growth.” Future lines of research are expected to focus on the challenges arising from these urbanization and industrialization processes. Key urbanization-related challenges include migration [53,54,55,90], access to housing [91], and urban design [92,93]. Industrialization-related challenges involve land-use transformation [94], environmental issues [95,96,97,98], and inequality [99,100,101].
Among the limitations of this research, mention should be made of the scope of the bibliometric databases used (Web of Science and Scopus) and the selection of search terms. As in all bibliometric analyses, these factors significantly influence the results obtained and may partially account for the observed predominance of Chinese contributions. Despite these limitations, this work provides a solid foundation for any researcher interested in the subject to build the theoretical framework for their studies. Based on this premise, as future lines of research, the authors intend to analyse peri-urban industrial development in the main cities of Extremadura (Spain), the region in which they reside. This would allow for a deeper understanding of the subject matter from an empirical perspective.

Author Contributions

All authors contributed equally to this work. All authors wrote, reviewed, and commented on the manuscript. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Funding

This research received no external funding.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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Figure 1. Systematic literature review process for “Urban Rural Industrialization”.
Figure 1. Systematic literature review process for “Urban Rural Industrialization”.
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Figure 2. Annual scientific production. Source: Own elaboration from Biblioshiny.
Figure 2. Annual scientific production. Source: Own elaboration from Biblioshiny.
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Figure 3. Most relevant sources. Source: Own elaboration from Biblioshiny analysis.
Figure 3. Most relevant sources. Source: Own elaboration from Biblioshiny analysis.
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Figure 4. Relationship between intellectual sources, authors, and study dimensions. Source: Own elaboration from Biblioshiny analysis.
Figure 4. Relationship between intellectual sources, authors, and study dimensions. Source: Own elaboration from Biblioshiny analysis.
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Figure 5. Most relevant and most cited authors. Source: Own elaboration from Biblioshiny analysis.
Figure 5. Most relevant and most cited authors. Source: Own elaboration from Biblioshiny analysis.
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Figure 6. Top most influential countries based on the number of publications. Source: Own elaboration from Biblioshiny analysis and data extraction.
Figure 6. Top most influential countries based on the number of publications. Source: Own elaboration from Biblioshiny analysis and data extraction.
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Figure 7. Most cited documents. Source: Own elaboration from Biblioshiny analysis.
Figure 7. Most cited documents. Source: Own elaboration from Biblioshiny analysis.
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Figure 8. Collaboration network. Source: Own elaboration from Biblioshiny analysis.
Figure 8. Collaboration network. Source: Own elaboration from Biblioshiny analysis.
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Figure 9. Keyword map. Source: Own elaboration from Biblioshiny analysis.
Figure 9. Keyword map. Source: Own elaboration from Biblioshiny analysis.
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Figure 10. Trend topics. Source: Own elaboration from Biblioshiny analysis.
Figure 10. Trend topics. Source: Own elaboration from Biblioshiny analysis.
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Figure 11. Word frequency over time. Source: Own elaboration from VOSviewer analysis.
Figure 11. Word frequency over time. Source: Own elaboration from VOSviewer analysis.
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Figure 12. Clusters by paired terms. Source: Own elaboration from Biblioshiny analysis.
Figure 12. Clusters by paired terms. Source: Own elaboration from Biblioshiny analysis.
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Figure 13. Thematic map. Source: Own elaboration from Biblioshiny analysis.
Figure 13. Thematic map. Source: Own elaboration from Biblioshiny analysis.
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Figure 14. Factorial Analysis. Source: Own elaboration from Biblioshiny analysis.
Figure 14. Factorial Analysis. Source: Own elaboration from Biblioshiny analysis.
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Table 1. Search criteria in the database. Source: Own elaboration from WoS and Scopus analysis.
Table 1. Search criteria in the database. Source: Own elaboration from WoS and Scopus analysis.
DatabaseSearch CriteriaTotal
WoS(TS = (URBAN RURAL INDUSTRIALIZATION)) NOT (DT = (“PROCEEDINGS PAPER” OR “REVIEW” OR “EARLY ACCESS” OR “EDITORIAL MATERIAL” OR “RETRACTED PUBLICATION” OR “BOOK REVIEW” OR “MEETING ABSTRACT”) OR PY = (“1999” OR “1998” OR “1997” OR “1996” OR “1995” OR “1994” OR “1992” OR “1991” OR “1990” OR “1989” OR “1985” OR “1978” OR “1977” OR “1975” OR “1967” OR “2004” OR “2003” OR “2002” OR “2001” OR “2000”) OR LA = (“SPANISH” OR “TURKISH” OR “FRENCH” OR “PORTUGUESE” OR “RUSSIAN” OR “CHINESE” OR “GERMAN” OR “ITALIAN” OR “SLOVENIAN” OR “AFRIKAANS” OR “CROATIAN” OR “DUTCH” OR “LITHUANIAN” OR “NORWEGIAN” OR “POLISH” OR “SLOVAK”) OR TMSO = (“6.178 Gender & Sexuality Studies” OR “1.120 Inflammatory Bowel Diseases & Infections” OR “1.156 Healthcare Policy” OR “6.73 Social Psychology” OR “1.137 Sleep Science & Circadian Systems” OR “1.44 Nutrition & Dietetics” OR “1.65 Allergy” OR “3.83 Bioengineering” OR “1.112 Palliative Care” OR “1.21 Psychiatry” OR “1.26 Diabetes” OR “1.36 Ophthalmology” OR “1.55 Urology & Nephrology-General” OR “6.24 Psychiatry & Psychology” OR “1.127 Molecular & Cell Biology-Pharmacology” OR “1.150 Hearing Loss” OR “1.163 Parasitology-General” OR “1.194 Tuberculosis & Leprosy” OR “1.228 Virology-Tropical Diseases” OR “1.23 Antibiotics & Antimicrobials” OR “1.252 Smoking Cessation” OR “1.261 Parasitology-Trypanosoma & Leishmania” OR “1.264 Longevity” OR “1.324 Bacterial Toxins & Diseases” OR “1.80 Bone Diseases” OR “1.81 Reproductive Biology” OR “2.59 Pigments, Sensors & Probes” OR “3.171 Photo productivity” OR “3.97 Plant Pathology” OR “8.124 Environmental Sciences” OR “3.60 Herbicides, Pesticides & Ground Poisoning” OR “3.91 Contamination & Phytoremediation” OR “8.19 Oceanography, Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences” OR “6.153 Climate Change” OR “3.2 Marine Biology” OR “3.45 Soil Science” OR “4.169 Remote Sensing” OR “3.16 Phytochemicals” OR “7.133 Geotechnical Engineering” OR “7.177 Combustion” OR “8.205 Ocean Dynamics” OR “8.312 Gas Hydrates” OR “6.146 Anthropology” OR “8.93 Archaeology” OR “10.290 Art” OR “6.11 Education & Educational Research” OR “6.269 Political Philosophy” OR “4.48 Knowledge Engineering & Representation” OR “10.240 Music” OR “10.268 History & Philosophy of Science” OR “6.256 Religion” OR “6.288 Information & Library Science”))482
ScopusTITLE-ABS-KEY (urban AND rural AND industrialization) AND PUBYEAR > 2004 AND PUBYEAR < 2026 AND (EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “MEDI”) OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “EART”) OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “ARTS”) OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “ENGI”) OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “AGRI”) OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “BUSI”) OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “ENER”) OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “COMP”) OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “BIOC”) OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “MULT”) OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “PHAR”) OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “CHEM”) OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “MATH”) OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “MATE”) OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “IMMU”) OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “PHYS”) OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “PSYC”) OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “CENG”) OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “DECI”) OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “NURS”) OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “NEUR”) OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “Undefined”) OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “VETE”) OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “HEAL”) OR EXCLUDE (SUBJAREA, “DENT”)) AND (LIMIT-TO (DOCTYPE, “ar”)) AND (LIMIT-TO ( LANGUAGE, “English”)) AND (LIMIT-TO (SRCTYPE, “j”))309
Table 2. Software used in bibliometric analysis of peri-urban industrialization.
Table 2. Software used in bibliometric analysis of peri-urban industrialization.
RQResearch ProblemsAnalysisSoftware
RQ 1Current state of researchCitation analysisBiblioshiny 4.1
RQ 2Social and intellectual structure of research Countries and co-citation networkBiblioshiny 4.1
VOSviewer 1.6.20
RQ 3Trending topics and themesNetwork visualization of keywords
Factorial Analysis
LDA Topics Model		Biblioshiny 4.1
VOSviewer 1.6.20
Big-ML (C) 2025
Table 3. General analysis information on the 636 selected papers. Source: Own elaboration from Biblioshiny analysis.
Table 3. General analysis information on the 636 selected papers. Source: Own elaboration from Biblioshiny analysis.
DescriptionResults
Timespan2005:2025
Sources (journals, book chapters)325
Documents636
Annual growth rate %3.23
Document average age7.08
Average citations per doc28.95
DOCUMENT CONTENTS
Keywords Plus (ID)2675
Author’s Keywords (DE)2275
Authors1484
Authors of single-authored docs143
AUTHORS COLLABORATION
Single-authored docs149
Co-authors per doc3.13
International co-authorships %17.61
DOCUMENT TYPES
Article621
Book chapter15
Table 4. Emerging themes from LDA analysis. Source: Own elaboration from Big ML analysis and metadata extraction.
Table 4. Emerging themes from LDA analysis. Source: Own elaboration from Big ML analysis and metadata extraction.
Title TopicCo-OccurrenceCluster (Figure 11)Thematic Group (Figure 12 and Figure 13)
1. Migration and socio-environmental dynamics in rural areas14.38%3, 4Niche
2. Urbanization and environmental impact22.53%2Basic
3. Policies, planning, and local dynamics24.23%1Basic
4. Spatial change and evolution of human settlements22.56%3Basic
5. Urbanization, industrialization, and rural areas29.77%1Motor
6. Land use: ecological and spatial patterns34.27%5Emerging
7. Sustainable assessment of urbanization35.22%1Basic
8. Urbanization: employment, housing, challenges rural areas14.51%1, 3Motor
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MDPI and ACS Style

Sánchez, F.T.; Castellano-Álvarez, F.J.; Robina-Ramírez, R. Industrial Diffusion Processes in Peri-Urban Environments: A State-of-the-Art Analysis of Current and Future Dimensions. Urban Sci. 2025, 9, 378. https://doi.org/10.3390/urbansci9090378

AMA Style

Sánchez FT, Castellano-Álvarez FJ, Robina-Ramírez R. Industrial Diffusion Processes in Peri-Urban Environments: A State-of-the-Art Analysis of Current and Future Dimensions. Urban Science. 2025; 9(9):378. https://doi.org/10.3390/urbansci9090378

Chicago/Turabian Style

Sánchez, Fernando Toro, Francisco Javier Castellano-Álvarez, and Rafael Robina-Ramírez. 2025. "Industrial Diffusion Processes in Peri-Urban Environments: A State-of-the-Art Analysis of Current and Future Dimensions" Urban Science 9, no. 9: 378. https://doi.org/10.3390/urbansci9090378

APA Style

Sánchez, F. T., Castellano-Álvarez, F. J., & Robina-Ramírez, R. (2025). Industrial Diffusion Processes in Peri-Urban Environments: A State-of-the-Art Analysis of Current and Future Dimensions. Urban Science, 9(9), 378. https://doi.org/10.3390/urbansci9090378

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