Characteristics and Trends of Urban Waterfront Human Settlements Based on CiteSpace

Urban waterfront human settlements have gradually become a hot topic for research in recent years. Using CiteSpace, 597 publications from 2017 to 2023 that were retrieved from the Web of Science were analyzed and sorted out, and the following characteristics were found: (1) The research hotspots transitioned from thermal comfort evaluation to the functional mechanism of water bodies, and then to the impact on the environment and residents’ behavior. (2) The integration of disciplines has promoted the diversification of perspectives on urban waterfront human settlements, and the content has become more concentrated in interdisciplinary fields. Research on corresponding technology and methods of urban waterfront human settlement has improved, and so has the extensiveness of the experiments. (3) The research on urban waterfront human settlement from the perspective of ecology has been improving. The research focuses more on the harmonious coexistence of ecological and cultural values and human beings.