This paper identified the research focus and development tendency of urban planning and climate change research from 1990 to 2016 using CiteSpace, which is based on the Web of Science database. Through cluster analysis and a document sorting method, the research direction of city planning and climate change were mainly divided into four academic groupings, 15 clusters with homogenous themes representing the current research focus direction at the sub-level. The detailed study on the framework presented three mainstream developing directions: (1) The index assessment and spatial simulation on the impact of urban spatial systems for climate change have become important methods to identify and improve the adaptability of urban space. (2) Adaptive governance as a bottom-up strategy giving priority to institutional adaptation policy and collaborative polices for responding to climate change has become the hot direction in recent years. (3) The policies of urban public health-related urban equity, vulnerability, and environmental sustainability were addressed especially during the period from 2007 to 2009. Dynamic evolution trends of the research field were discussed: (1) The total numbers of papers in this field increased distinctly between 2005 and 2008, research focus shifted from single-dimension to multi-dimension comprehensive studies, and the humanism tendency was obvious. (2) After 2010, research on multi-level governance and spatial adaptation strategies became the key issues, and a bottom-up level adaptation policies were addressed. Finally, the critical influence of the important literature and the forefront issues of the research field were put forward.

Although a number of studies have discussed the economic, geopolitical and environmental impacts of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), there is a scarcity of analysis on the importance of science in the Belt and Road (B&R). Adopting bibliographical data from Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science database for the period 2000–2018, this study investigates the network properties, topological structure, spatial pattern, position of countries, core-periphery sets, and the hierarchy of the network from a dynamic perspective. The results show that scientific collaboration is increasingly frequent. The “hub-and-spoke” and triangulated structures coexist, shaping the landscape of the network. With the decline of Central and Eastern Europe, and the rise of the Asia-Pacific region, the spatial pattern evolves from ‘‘strong Western and weak Eastern” to ‘‘weak Western and strong Eastern’’. The central position has been occupied by India, China, and Turkey, while Russia’s influence has lessened over time. Moreover, the collaboration network is a typical core–periphery structure with prominent hierarchical features. China, Poland, and Saudi Arabia are the top-tier coordination centers within sub-networks. Finally, this study provides policy recommendations and prospective research directions.

The edge-bundling algorithm is applied to visualize the spatial evolution of the international scientific collaborative network, which is reshaping the global scientific landscape. Our analysis finds that as scientific research in the Asia-Pacific region has grown, especially in China, global scientific cooperation across the Eastern and Western hemispheres has greatly increased, thus extending the core axis of global scientific cooperation to the Western Pacific.