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More than 59 million people reside in the six member countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) (the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia). The rate of urbanization is more than 80% in each of these countries. To better understand the trends and knowledge structures and to aid policy design and implementation, more research is needed on the topic of urbanization in GCC countries. In order to address this knowledge gap, bibliometric analysis and scientific mapping procedures utilizing VOSviewer were employed. A total of 415 academic papers covering four decades, from 1980 to 2021, were collected from the Web of Science database and split into three time periods: 1980–2017, 2018–2019, and 2020–2021. The findings indicate that the topics related to sustainable development, environmental regulations, renewable energy, and smart cities have received the most attention. In addition, land use planning, urban growth, and energy consumption have been dominant themes over different periods. Several intertwined factors have contributed to the evolution of research over these periods. These include the widespread diffusion of the sustainability agenda, the rise of advanced ICT, and the escalating rate of urbanization. It can also be explained by the fact that the world has been grappling with numerous environmental challenges, increasingly requiring innovative solutions for sustainability. The findings of this study can be used to develop better strategies for sustainable urban development in the region.

Although the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries are in an arid region with limited water resources, the per capita water and electricity consumptions are high, at 560 L/capita/day and 7000–18,000 kWh/year, respectively. Although macroscale parameters (e.g., GDP and population) have been assumed to be correlated with water and electricity demand, this study aims to verify whether this assumption still holds true. As opposed to the previous literature, this study reveals that, although water production and electricity generation had been correlated with GDP and population for years, they have been decoupled from these macroscale parameters since 2015. Such decoupling can be explained by the three phases of economic development. In the initial stage, GDP and population growth promoted rapid increases in water and electricity demands, which came down in the second stage as the consumers became satisfied with water and electricity supplies. In the third stage, the water and electricity demands were decoupled from GDP and population due to demand-management policies for environmental protection and cost saving, combined with consumers’ efforts, such as water-saving faucets and energy efficiency in homes, which indicates that microscale parameters have become more influential on water and electricity demands than macroscale parameters.