Smart interventions are gaining global attention as a solution to the sustainability challenges being faced globally. With the onset of the smart city movement, the inclusion of smart technologies aims to promote the environmental, social, and economic well-being of the citizens. This paper analyses the global research of smart cities and sustainable urban planning from January 2003 to September 2023 to identify thematic mapping, bibliometric networks, and word cloud analyses. A systemic review and bibliometric analysis were done using the visual analytical softwares Biblioshiny and VOSviewer. The study reviews 2074 research articles written by 7818 authors and published in 796 sources acquired through the Web of Science. The impact of the documents will be described through the document co-citation, most relevant journals, authors and affiliations, country-wise production and collaborations, and keyword clusters. The results indicate that the research for these topics was initiated in 2003, and within the last two decades, a total of 2074 have been published. The volume of publications started increasing in 2015. Although most papers have been produced via affiliations from Norway, Iran, and China, collaborations have been avidly present throughout the globe. “Sustainability” has been the dominant publishing journal in both quantitative and qualitative terms followed by “Sustainable Cities and Society”. The most frequently used keywords were ‘smart cities’, ‘sustainable’, and ‘urban planning.’ The most prolific authors are Simon Elias Bibri and Yigitcanlar Tan with 38 and 23 publications respectively. This study provides a global perspective on smart cities and sustainability. The study's findings can assist scholars and researchers in further research on developing these topics further.