A bibliometric review of
tactical urban planning strategies as a sustainable planning tool in Ecuador
Una revisión
bibliométrica de las estrategias de planificación urbana táctica como
herramienta de planificación sostenible en Ecuador
Juan Carlos Briones Macias*
ABSTRACT
Tactical
urbanism, understood as a set of temporary, low-cost, and highly participatory
urban interventions, is presented as a promising strategy to transform degraded
public spaces and promote local development. This study carries out a
systematic and bibliometric review focused exclusively on the Ecuadorian
context, with special emphasis on the Mapasingue
sector of Guayaquil, one of the most densely populated neighborhoods with the
greatest socio-spatial challenges in the city. The research uses the PRISMA
2020 protocol to analyze indexed literature (2015–2025) in Scopus, Web of
Science, and SciELO, identifying trends, research
gaps, and potential applications of tactical urbanism in this context. The
results reveal an almost total absence of systematic empirical studies in
Ecuador, which limits the capacity to generate evidence-based urban policies.
It is concluded that tactical urbanism, if integrated into inclusive and
participatory governance frameworks, can be a key driver for improving the
quality of life in Mapasingue and other vulnerable
sectors of Guayaquil.
Keywords:
Tactical urban planning, local development, bibliometric analysis, urban
planning
RESUMEN
El
urbanismo táctico, entendido como un conjunto de intervenciones urbanas
temporales, de bajo costo y altamente participativas, se presenta como una
estrategia prometedora para transformar espacios públicos degradados y promover
el desarrollo local. Este estudio realiza una revisión sistemática y
bibliométrica centrada exclusivamente en el contexto ecuatoriano, con especial
énfasis en el sector de Mapasingue de Guayaquil, uno de los barrios más
densamente poblados y con mayores desafíos socioespaciales de la ciudad. La
investigación utiliza el protocolo PRISMA 2020 para analizar la literatura
indexada (2015-2025) en Scopus, Web of Science y SciELO, identificando
tendencias, brechas de investigación y posibles aplicaciones del urbanismo
táctico en este contexto. Los resultados revelan una ausencia casi total de
estudios empíricos sistemáticos en Ecuador, lo que limita la capacidad de
generar políticas urbanas basadas en evidencia. Se concluye que el urbanismo
táctico, si se integra en marcos de gobernanza inclusivos y participativos,
puede ser un factor clave para mejorar la calidad de vida en Mapasingue y otros
sectores vulnerables de Guayaquil.
Palabras
clave: Imagen urbana, arquitectura tradicional, desarrollo
local, sociedad y cultura
INTRODUCTION
The concept of tactical urbanism emerged as a response
to the rigidity and slowness of traditional urban planning models, which are
often conditioned by lengthy administrative procedures, high budgets, and low
citizen participation in decision-making (Reifs
Jiménez et al., 2025). Unlike large infrastructure projects, which require
years of planning and execution (Lotfipour and Mohtavipour, 2024), tactical interventions are
characterized by their immediacy, low cost, adaptability, and high level of
community participation.
This approach seeks to experiment with small-scale
solutions that, if successful, can be consolidated and integrated into
permanent urban plans (Balsas, 2021; Mendes et al., 2020). Their importance
lies not only in the physical transformation of space, but also in the
participatory dynamics and strengthening of the social fabric that they
promote. By implementing temporary interventions, opportunities arise to
evaluate the use of space, observe citizen behavior, and collect data to
support evidence-based urban decision-making (Awasthi et al., 2018; Gréhaigne et al., 2001).
In Guayaquil, the most visible urban transformations
have historically been linked to large-scale projects, such as the regeneration
of downtown areas, the construction of highways, or the creation of iconic
spaces. These projects have contributed to improving certain strategic sectors
of the city, but have generally not extended to peripheral neighborhoods with
high levels of vulnerability.
Mapasingue,
located in the northwest of Guayaquil, exemplifies this territorial divide. Its
irregular topography, combined with informal land occupation and high
population density, creates significant challenges in terms of mobility,
accessibility, and the provision of basic services (De Murzi and Orejuela,
2023). Added to this is the scarcity of green areas and quality public spaces
(Lauria, 2023; Paül i
Agustí and Guerrero Lladós, 2022), as well as the
perception of insecurity among its residents. Existing parks, squares, and
recreational areas are often underused or in poor condition due to a lack of
ongoing maintenance and limited public investment in the area (López et al.,
2021). This scenario makes Mapasingue a place with
high potential for the implementation of tactical urban planning strategies
that not only activate the social use of public spaces but also foster
economic, cultural, and recreational dynamics capable of strengthening
neighborhood identity and community cohesion (Zambrano-Monserrate et al.,
2023).
This research is based on the premise that tactical
urban planning can become a strategic tool for addressing Guayaquil's immediate
needs, allowing for rapid, low-cost interventions that, in turn, serve as a
basis for larger-scale, long-term urban projects. Mapasingue
offers an ideal environment for testing models adapted to its physical and
social reality, involving its residents in all stages of the process:
diagnosis, design, implementation, and evaluation (Vallejo-Robalino et al.,
2024).
Therefore, this study seeks to generate an
evidence-based framework for action to guide local authorities, community
organizations, and academic actors in the application of tactical urban
planning in Guayaquil, prioritizing citizen participation and the
sustainability of interventions.
MATERIALS
AND METHODS
The
research is carried out through a systematic review of high-impact articles in
the Scopus and ScienceDirect scientific databases, structuring an
interrelational graph of the gaps and influence on urban planning at the
neighborhood level, known as tactical interventions in informal human
settlements, such as the case of Mapasingue. This data
was systematized in AnalizeSearch and Analitics to obtain the annual impact of publications and
determine the indicators that contribute to the development of spatial learning
in student performance. The hermeneutic method was used, in which a 10-year
regression of the emergence of artificial intelligence in educational models
was performed. To this end, texts by representative authors in the global
context were selected, along with their impact, type of contribution, and
relevant contribution by authors. This data was relevant for analyzing their
citation index and impact, generating a correlation of variables such as
planning, urbanism, and local development.
Two phases of bibliometric analysis of the information were carried out
on the PRISMA 2020 and VOSViewer platforms to
generate a checklist and impact graphs for the abstraction of relevant results
from the application of urban design in informal human settlements.
Systematic review
A systematic review design was followed according to
the PRISMA 2020 protocol (Page et al., 2021), which guarantees the traceability
and reproducibility of the process. The methodology was structured in the
following phases:
Definition of the research question
What scientific evidence exists on the application of
tactical urbanism as a tool for local development in Guayaquil, particularly in
Mapasingue?
Search strategy
Combinations of keywords in Spanish and English were
used: ("tactical urbanism" or "tactical urbanism") and
("local development" or "local development") and
("Guayaquil" or "Ecuador").
Searches were conducted in Scopus, Web of Science (WoS), and SciELO, restricting
publications to between 2019 and 2024.
Inclusion criteria:
· Peer-reviewed
articles.
· Studies
conducted in Ecuador or that serve as a direct reference for similar urban
contexts.
· Research
analyzing interventions in public spaces and their relationship to community
participation. Exclusion criteria
· Technical
documents not peer-reviewed.
· Projects
without evaluation or follow-up.
· Publications
outside the established deadline.
· Study
selection
From a total of 316 initial records, duplicates were
removed and inclusion/exclusion filters were applied, leaving 14 studies for
detailed analysis, in order to subsequently apply a bibliometric analysis. VOSviewer was used to map the relationships between
authors, institutions, and keywords (Morales Castro et al., 2025). Recurring
themes and the lack of scientific production focused on Mapasingue
were identified, thus creating an analysis matrix with author, year,
methodology, location, type of intervention, actors involved, and results
obtained.
Table1
. Specific review of literature
|
Authors
and year |
Title |
Magazine/Source |
Approach
/ Method |
|
(Ríos-Mantilla, 2022) |
Itinerant
Tactical Urbanism Laboratories (LIUTS) in the “Lucha de los Pobres” in Quito,
Ecuador |
Island
Press |
Theoretical
and methodological essay |
|
(Balsas, 2021) |
Sustainable urbanism: riverfront greenway planning
from tradition to innovation |
Urban
Planning |
Critical
review + case studies |
|
(Mendes et al., 2020) |
Adverse climate change caused by urbanization
without environmental planning and assessment in Santiago, Chile |
Cities |
Regional
comparative study |
|
(Poli & Imbesi, 2022) |
Green Infrastructures and Water Management. Urban
Regeneration Strategies to Face Global Change |
INVI
Magazine |
Qualitative
case study |
Note: Scopus (2025).
RESULTS
The analysis reveals a significant gap in the
scientific literature on tactical urbanism in Ecuador. No published studies
were found that systematically document the interventions in Mapasingue, and the few existing national studies address
tactical urbanism (Silva Duarte et al., 2022) theoretically or in relation to neighborhoods
in similar contexts in Guayaquil. There are isolated interventions to improve
public spaces in vulnerable neighborhoods, but without an explicit tactical
urban planning approach or a formal bibliographic record (Urbina, 2021).
Municipal assessments identify problems of insecurity,
deterioration of street furniture, and lack of green spaces in Mapasingue, but do not propose experimental or
participatory strategies to solve them.
There are no metrics for evaluating the impact on
space use, social cohesion, or economic activity linked to tactical actions.
· Possible
indicators for future studies in Mapasingue:
· Increase
in pedestrian use of the areas involved.
· Changes
in the perception of safety.
· Creation
or strengthening of local micro-enterprises.
· Level
of community participation in the design and maintenance of spaces.
As part of the literature review, typical and atypical
data were generated from research on urban planning in the context of
informality (Valdez, 2019), indicating that computer science leads the
development of generative models in higher education, while social sciences, as
atypical data, have expanded their influence from urban planning to land use
planning, leading to the recognition that the search for general cultural
information or basic knowledge is also being influenced by urban design (Xin,
2023).
Figure 1.
Types of scientific documentation related to urban planning in informal
settlements.
Note: Own elaboration.
PRISMA 2020 analysis
To systematize and obtain final results from the
scientific article review process, the PRISMA 2020 statement was used
(including lists of indicators and variables within the search flow); which
included all review articles from the complete search list comprising 9,324
items, some of which included subtopics corresponding to the study indicators
defined by the keywords "urban planning" and "local
development." Structured abstracts of systematic reviews presented in
journals and conferences were included (Page et al., 2021). This yielded the
following results:
VOSViewer
analysis
In the second stage, a bibliometric analysis was
conducted to examine research trends in urban planning and local development
correlated with design and informal human settlements during the period
2015-2025. To this end, the Scopus and ScienceDirect databases (Wu et al.,
2024) were used, selected for their broad scope and recognition in the academic
community. Specific keywords related to urban development were defined to
retrieve relevant documents, so that the search was divided into two concurrent
fields that allowed for a better visualization of the field of knowledge of
urban planning (Dutto & Dighero, 2019). For this purpose, a sequence data
table was structured for the process (see Table 1).
|
Table 1. Search strategy |
|
|
urbanism AND human
settlements |
Urban development AND
impact |
|
( TITLE-ABS-KEY ( urbanism
AND local development ) AND TITLE-ABS-KEY ( design model AND human informal
settlements ) ) AND PUBYEAR > 2015 |
(TITLE-ABS-KEY (urbanism
AND development) AND TITLE-ABS-KEY (good use AND impact)) AND PUBYEAR >
2015 |
Source: Own elaboration
The graph was handled as a chain of interrelationships
around scientific searches and two groups of variables, namely urbanism and its
influence on human settlements, and urban development and its impact.
DISCUSSION
The lack of research focused on Mapasingue
means that urban policy decisions are made without local empirical evidence,
based on generalizations or experiences from other contexts. This gap is
particularly worrying because it limits the possibility of designing
interventions adapted to the physical, social, and economic reality of the area
(Rinchumphu et al., 2024).
A tactical urban planning program in Mapasingue should:
Incorporate neighborhood participation from the design
phase to ensure community ownership of the space.
Include ongoing evaluation mechanisms that track
changes in the use, safety, and perception of the space.
Establish public-community partnerships, in which the
municipality provides materials and technical advice, and the community takes
on maintenance tasks (Dharmadiatmika et al., 2023).
Adapt to the unique topography and accessibility of
the area, integrating lightweight but functional solutions such as modified
stairways, lookout points, and modular green spaces. Furthermore, it is
essential that these actions are not limited to isolated interventions but are
part of a comprehensive urban strategy linked to housing, transportation, and
social development policies.
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