Identifying and Analyzing the Main Strands of Research on the subject of Ethics in Urban Planning: A Systematic Review of Literature with Thematic Analysis

Ethics is related to choice and practical judgment. Since the nature of urban planning is related to the pursuit of community interests through determining appropriate actions for the future during successive choices in complex settings and uncertain conditions, it can be said that ethical considerations are an inseparable part of it and it is inevitable to integrate the philosophy of ethics with the thoughts and professional efforts of planning. In general, addressing the ethical questions of "do's and don'ts" and examining "the nature and meaning of moral values" in planning is always urgent and necessary but challenges raised in the contemporary era, the emphasis of new theoretical positions on attention to contextual differences and conflicts in perceptions and interpretations of values and ethical principles of planning, and ultimately the dispersion and reduction of attention to the area of planning ethics in the recent decades, the necessity of reviewing and rethinking the content of research published in this area has become more prominent. The current research aims to present a comprehensive view of ethics in planning by identifying dominant themes in the literature, specifying existing research gaps, and of course introducing new paths to complete the various dimensions of planning ethics. With answering to the questions like: what are the main priorities of researchers regarding ethics in urban planning? Which subjects and issues have been neglected in the existing researches and what perspectives can be suggested for future researches in this area? This research provides a general view of ethics in planning and its changes over time.

This research is a systematic investigation of a specific subject to improve or expand knowledge, it is considered basic research that has been conducted with a qualitative approach (thematic analysis). Table 1. Methodological design in this research General stages Descriptions Outputs Review strategy Explaining the qualitative systematic review using thematic analysis The review plan  Data collection Identifying key concepts and searching for primary sources Finding 224 sources as articles, dissertations, book chapters 110 researches enter the analysis stage as a final data set. Refinement and selection of the most relevant studies Analyzing and synthesizing the dataset Descriptive analysis of research Temporal and geographical distribution and researches focus area Content analysis in five steps: Reading the full text of documents in the dataset; Selecting textual codes; Extracting basic themes; Synthesizing the basic themes and creating organizing themes; Grouping the organizing themes and generating the global themes.identifying three global themes: integration of ethical theories with planning theory, ethics in the realm of professional practice, and ethical considerations in the Academic realm. introducing potential paths for future research.

By analyzing the final data set, we have identified three global themes: integration of ethical theories with planning theory, ethics in the realm of professional practice, and ethical considerations in the academic realm.Research under the First global theme, integrating ethical theories with planning theory is qualitative and discusses the nature and role of planning based on ethical philosophy. With an extroverted approach, these works focus on normative ethical theories and seek to explain the most basic criteria of rightness and wrongness and do and don'ts in planning. Second global them, ethics in the realm of professional practice is focused on the ethical dimensions and aspects of the planning practice including Ethical attitudes of planners, the complexities of decision-making and ethical judgment in the planning process, ethics in planning techniques, and the direct application of ethical theories in practice. Research under the third global theme, ethics, and ethical considerations in the academic realm of planning is focused on teaching ethics in planning and ethics in planning research.

According to the investigations of the present research, the research focused on ethics in planning has been scattered and separated over time and their balance has decreased in different layers (Figure 5). In the 1990s, most of the themes receivedthe attention of researchers, but since the beginning of the 21st century, we have seen a decline in direct attention to this research field at various levels. Of course, a series of themes such as extracting the values of planners, investigating the nature and content of professional codes, and teaching ethics in planning have always been welcomed by researchers. The continuation of attention to these themes shows things like learning from action, determining ethical frameworks through a bottom-up process, and extracting the inner values of planning have always been emphasized by researchers. . Also, the flow of research in the last two decades shows that the context of planning and the importance and impact of contextual differences in the selection, interpretation, and teaching of ethical concepts and ideas have become more prominent.

A general review of the planning ethics literature shows that the concerns related to the ethics and values of planning are largely dominated by normative concerns. The researchers of this field, instead of exploring more deeply the "nature and meaning of ethical values and principles" (meta-ethical field) and how to identify the appropriate solution in each specific situation, focus on the normative Deontological frameworks derived from Western contexts, which put forth universal normative principles and procedures without considering the impact of context and culture on knowledge and behavior.