Research Trends and Future Agenda on Urban Amenities: A Bibliometric Analysis and Critical Review

Urban amenities are spatially localized attributes and resources within urban contexts that provide residents and potential newcomers with utility and attractiveness. This review combines bibliometric and content analyses of 568 papers retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection for 2015–2024. Five keyword clusters are synthesized into four themes: migration and urban growth; accessibility and social equity; impact and property value; and health and satisfaction. The synthesis reveals heterogeneous amenity preferences across population groups and inconsistent findings on firm location. Physical proximity does not necessarily ensure effective or equitable access. Property-market capitalisation can coexist with affordability pressures and displacement, highlighting tensions between market value and social equity. Amenities are associated with health, satisfaction, and place attachment, but limited longitudinal evidence constrains understanding of temporal dynamics. Across themes, findings depend on population characteristics, amenity types, and local contexts. Future research should prioritize comparative analyses of migration and firm location across populations, industries, and urban contexts, integrated assessment of physical and perceived accessibility, broader valuation frameworks, and investigation of the psychological and social mechanisms linking amenities to health, satisfaction, and place attachment.