From Technological Sustainability to Social Sustainability: An Analysis of Hotspots and Trends in Residential Design Evaluation

Residential design should not only meet the growing demand for habitation but also reduce the negative impact on the natural environment. Therefore, the sustainability of residential buildings has become increasingly important in residential design evaluation. Taking the core database of the Web of Science platform as its source of information, this paper uses bibliometrics to visually analyze the current research status of residential design evaluation and its development trends, as well as hotspots of research from the perspectives of the annual distribution of publications, research fields and institutions, keywords, and highly cited articles. The results demonstrate the following: the number of publications on residential design evaluation has shown an overall upward trend and has grown rapidly over the past five years. Furthermore, due to the emergence of social issues, such as the aging population, social polarization, and rising urban poverty levels, scholars in the field have attached importance to the comprehensive evaluation of residential senior-friendliness, fairness, health, and quality, thereby expanding the connotation of residential sustainability from the technological dimension toward the social dimension. This paper can help researchers to identify future research directions in this field.