(Re)Defining Restorative and Regenerative Urban Design and Their Relation to UNSDGs—A Systematic Review

The 1992, the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development highlighted that human impacts on the environment should be reduced. Against this backdrop, publications on restorative and regenerative urban design first appeared in the mid-1990s, and both disciplines have developed rapidly up to the present time. However, there is still some uncertainty regarding the interrelationships and differences between these two terms, and their association with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Based on a search of the Web of Science database, a total of 117 papers were studied with the help of VOS viewer and R studio. The differences between the two disciplines and their respective associations with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals were analyzed using key performance indicators. Detailed analysis was used to explore their current development status. Scientific publication and citation network analyses were used to examine the historical developments and interrelationships between two disciplines. The review revealed that both disciplines are closely related to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, especially regenerative urban design, but they have developed independently in the field of urban design. Unlike the descriptions found in many of the identified papers, restorative urban design not only focuses on ecological aspects but also attempts to create a built environment that allows its users to thrive both physically and mentally. Regenerative urban design is more inclined to restore or create an “ability”. Further, both disciplines are in their infancy but have evolved from internal conceptual development to the stage of exploring external relationships and frameworks as well as mechanisms. This review found that although many frameworks and models are used to support and evaluate these two disciplines, almost all of them fail to integrate necessary aspects of the ecosystem, e.g., elements, relationships, processes, etc. Moreover, future work should examine the design patterns that are closely related to restorative and regenerative urban design to better guide the concrete practice.