To summarize the general characteristics of urbanization research in China and abroad, the CiteSpace and HistCite bibliometric methods are used to analyze the quantity, keywords, and research teams of the urbanization research literature selected from the Chinese Core Journals and Web of Science Core Collection. The study shows that the number of articles published in the field of urbanization is on the rise, and urbanization has gradually become one of the most important research directions of human geography. Compared with other countries or regions, China's urbanization research started relatively late, but because of the unique characteristics and complexity of China's urbanization process, such research has become an important part of the urbanization study in the world, and the content is even more abundant and refined, mainly including sustainable development, land use, industrialization, industrial structure, ecological environment, new urbanization, spatial structure, and other directions, while international urbanization research is characterized by decentralization, including environmental science, urban research, physical geography, public administration, regional studies, among others. Each research direction is relatively independent, but there is still a mutual citation relationship.