Tracking Our Footsteps

Abstract

Problem, research strategy, and findings: We conduct a systematic reading of all articles published in the past 30 years in three U.S.-based general planning journals, Journal of the American Planning Association (JAPA), Journal of Planning Education and Research (JPER), and Journal of Planning Literature (JPL), using latent Dirichlet allocation, a text mining technique. We find that certain research themes remain important in the past 3 decades, such as planning process, planning methods, and land use/growth management, whereas others have lost their prominent status, such as planning theory and planning education. New fields such as food systems have emerged during the study period. Editorial regimes appear to be associated with theme dynamics.

Takeaway for practice: In this study we demonstrate a text mining method to effectively summarize a large amount of text data and track planning researchers’ footsteps in the study of planning issues reflected from published research articles. We identify past and emerging research trends in the studied journals that can help scholars situate their work in the literature and practitioners find collaboration opportunities. It also helps professional associations such as the American Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP) and the APA open up new conference tracks and/or specialization groups/divisions so they can reflect the ever-changing interests of their memberships in a timely manner.

Keywords:

• planning journals
• planning publication
• research theme
• text mining

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We thank our two outstanding graduate research assistants, Gerald (Scott) Reigel and Yonghun Song, for their help in collecting the articles and transforming them into computer-readable texts. We appreciate and acknowledge their efforts.

SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL

Supplemental data for this article can be found on the publisher’s website.

Notes

1 Note that the percentages may not add up to 100. The LDA method allows overlaps between themes, so one word can fall into more than one theme.

2 Out of the 31 currently operating light rail systems in the United States recorded by Light Rail Transit Association, 10 (32%) opened during this period.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Florida State University First Year Assistant Professor Award [043377].

Notes on contributors

Li Fang

LI FANG ([email protected]) is an assistant professor in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at Florida State University.

Reid Ewing

REID EWING ([email protected]) is a distinguished professor in the Department of City and Metropolitan Planning and the director of the Metropolitan Research Center at the University of Utah.