Mapping resilience: The role of space syntax in sustainable urban development

Amid escalating global challenges such as climate change, natural disasters, pandemics, and rapid urbanization, building resilient and sustainable urban environments has become increasingly critical. Although urban resilience has gained scholarly attention, the role of spatial configuration in shaping a city’s adaptive capacity remains underexplored. This study addresses this gap by examining how space syntax theory and methods have evolved within urban resilience research, aiming to clarify the contribution of spatial form to adaptive urban systems. The study adopts a quantitative bibliometric research approach using a systematic science-mapping design. A dataset of 3,497 peer-reviewed publications indexed between 1971 and September 2024 was analyzed using VOSviewer. Bibliometric techniques including coauthorship, co-citation, and keyword co-occurrence analyses—were applied to identify publication trends, thematic structures, leading contributors, collaboration networks, and research gaps. The findings reveal a sharp increase in scholarly output after 2013, with 99.43% of publications appearing in the last decade, indicating the rapid consolidation of this interdisciplinary field. Key thematic clusters highlight growing research attention to climate adaptation, public health, disaster risk assessment, mobility, and spatial planning, alongside expanding international collaboration. The analysis further indicates a shift from predominantly theoretical discussions toward applied, resilience-oriented urban studies employing space syntax techniques. Overall, the study positions space syntax as a robust analytical framework for urban resilience, offering systematic insights into connectivity, accessibility, and spatial adaptability. By mapping intellectual trajectories and identifying gaps, the study provides a foundation for interdisciplinary integration, longitudinal inquiry, and comparative evaluation with complementary urban analytical approaches.