Restrictions of Historical Tissues on Urban Growth, Self-Sustaining Agglomeration in Walled Cities of Chinese Origin
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
An improvement in English grammar can be noticed in some parts of the text. Nevertheless, in my opinion English Proofreading by an experienced native-English proof-reader is still needed to make the paper acceptable from the point of view of English language.
I am very sorry, but it is impossible for me, to evaluate the content of the paper, having so many doubts about the meaning of each sentence.
Examples, among many others, of parts needing proof reading:
1 – The title: “The Restrictions of historical tissues on urban growth, self-sustaining agglomeration in Sinology walled cities
Comment: Sinology is a discipline or a field of knowledge. For that reason, in the aforementioned sentence “Sinology” cannot be used in the way it is used. We can say “in Chinese walled cities” or “in walled cities of Chinese origin”. The title does not make sense in the way it is written.
Authors explain that “Sinology city” is used by Wu Jin and Kai Gu but I did not find evidence of that in the cited publications by those authors. Wu Jin and Kai Gu refer to “ Chinese traditional cities” or “Chinese urban morphology” making a “sinology of urban morphology”. Nevertheless, in my opinion you cannot say in English: “Sinology walled cities”.
2 – The period between lines 73-77 needs to be checked.
3 – Just an example of a sentence that does not make sense in English. “ Lines 89-91: “For the case study, the pre-industrial city state enclosed by the 21 historical East Asian cities have been utilized to establish a database to assess the city’s scaling radius with their population carriers”.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you very much for your attention and the referees’ valuable comments on our paper. We have revised the manuscript according to reviewers' comments. Enclosed please find the revised manuscript, responses to the referees as well as a list of changes. We sincerely hope this manuscript will be finally acceptable to be published on “Sustainability”. We look forward to hearing from you soon.
Best regards
Haosu Z. and Bart J. D. on behalf of the authors.
Corresponding author:
Haosu Zhao at Bart laboratory, Faculty of Environmental Engineering, The University of Kitakyushu, Kitakyushu, Fukuoka 808-0135, Japan
E-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]
Tel: +81-070-1940-8889
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The summary of the changes and responses to Referees’ comments are listed below.
Point 1: The sentence “Sinology” is not appropriate for the title
Responds 1: We revised the title as recommended. The revised title is: Restrictions of historical tissues on urban growth, self-sustaining agglomeration in walled cities of Chinese origin.
We further rephrased the term “Sinology” by using the words “Sino-influenced city” to better reflect our intention on categorizing of each the primary objects we study. Since these cities are given birth by similar planning ideology and cosmology that using the classical (capital) city model to emphasis the seat of ruling power. And their core areas are historically located around the mainland of China. Correlated literature can reference from (No38. Funo Shuji, 2017; No69. Whitehand, J. W. R., and Kai Gu, 2006) in reference list.
Point 2: The period between lines 73-77 needs to be checked.
Responds 2: The expression about city formation with time geography changing has been modified in lines “338-342”.
Point 3: Manuscript need extensive English editing.
Responds 3: The manuscript has been checked by MDPI for extensive English language editing. Many grammatical or typographical errors should be revised.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
From the scientific point of view, this is an interesting article. It contains many innovative insights. I can also see the authors' contribution to improve it. The current title is in good relation to the purpose and content of the study.
I notice various stylistic and linguistic complexities in the article. Therefore, a review of the text by an English speaker would be useful.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you very much for your attention and the referees’ valuable comments on our paper. We have revised the manuscript according to reviewers' comments. Enclosed please find the revised manuscript, responses to the referees as well as a list of changes. We sincerely hope this manuscript will be finally acceptable to be published on “Sustainability”. We look forward to hearing from you soon.
Best regards
Haosu Z. and Bart J. D. on behalf of the authors.
Corresponding author:
Haosu Zhao at Bart laboratory, Faculty of Environmental Engineering, The University of Kitakyushu, Kitakyushu, Fukuoka 808-0135, Japan
E-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]
Tel: +81-070-1940-8889
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The summary of the changes and responses to Referees’ comments are listed below.
Point 1: Manuscript need extensive English editing.
Responds 1: The manuscript has been checked by MDPI for extensive English language editing. Many grammatical or typographical errors should be revised.
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The text is now written in an acceptable English and its content was subject to evaluation.
Since you have 21 case studies, I would replace (line 91) the sentence "For this case study" by "For this study".
This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The manuscript is poorly translated into English. Probably it was translated literally by a translator application without being reviewed by an English speaking native. Therefore, it is rather difficult to understand each sentence.
Despite that big handicap, it is possible to understand that a great amount of work is integrated into the manuscript and (very probably) based in a sound scientific basis.
The subject is rather innovative but a greater attention should be given to terminology. For example, the classification established for each urban scale does not follow always the same denomination.
The manuscript should be resubmitted after being correctly translated into English by a professional translator.
Author Response
Thank you for your comments that all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper. We have studied comments carefully and have made correction which we hope meet with approval. Revised portion are marked in red in the attached manuscript. The main responds to the comments are as following:
Point 1: The urban scale does not follow always the same denomination.
Responds 1: We rephrased our investigation method and improved the classification criteria in revised paper that to avoid historical and cultural relevance perturbs and proposed a generic perspective to assessing the walled urban scales. The interpretation of wall dependent cluster algorithm have add in revised Figure 1., the analysis framework are explained in section 4 (analysis and result), and correlated discussion add in section 5 (after the summary).
Point 2: manuscript is poorly translated into English.
Responds 2: The whole manuscript was carefully revised to improve the writing. Many grammatical or typographical errors have been revised.
Thank you for the kind advice.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper establishes a morphological analysis of wall bounded urban extensions of Eastern Asia cities, based on fractal (area-perimeter allometry) methods. Results estimate the allometric scaling for each of the 21 case study areas, allowing a comparison of their spatial properties. Although interesting as a subject of analysis, the paper appears to be very weak in terms of language, making it hard to read. The paper is appropriately structured, and the mathematical part presenting the fractal measurements of urban growth is interesting, however, the research target remains vague and the socioeconomic dimension seems to be left out.
The subject analyzed is original, however the research question should be more clearly defined from the start and also should be more clearly depicted in the title and the abstract.
The title is inapropriate as the phrase "Urban organize in self-sustains" is vague and wrongly formulated.
Data and analyses are presented appropriately, and illustrations, graphs and maps are adequate. The paper could be of interest to the readers of the journal, although focusing merely on the geometry of the Eastern Asia historical areas and not connecting the analysis to current sustainability issues. The language is inappropriate and not understandable in many parts of the text and this makes it hard to read.
Author Response
Thank you for your comments that all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper. We have studied comments carefully and have made correction which we hope meet with approval. Revised portion are marked in red in the attached paper. The main responds to the comments are as following:
point 1: The research question should be more clearly defined from the start and also should be more clearly depicted in the title and the abstract.
Responds 1: We apologize the confusing title and abstract. We have changed our title and improved the abstract in revised manuscript. The aims of this study are defined in the revised Introduction (the first and seven paragraph).
Point 2: The language is inappropriate and not understandable.
Responds 2: The whole manuscript was carefully revised to improve the writing. Many grammatical or typographical errors have been revised.
Thank you for the kind advice.
Sincerely yours,
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
The reviewed text is a valuable scientific work. In the summary, the Authors can propose some solutions so the methodology used can be multiplied in other research projects (e.g. in European cities, in other urbanized systems, e.g. relatively young cities with development dynamics on the one hand, and specific restrictions / barriers, spatial development thresholds on the other). I am not able to unequivocally assess all results from individual stages of the study due to limitations in the scope of statistical information presented in the text (I do not question their correctness, I know that it is not possible to present the analyzes in detail due to their size). However, that is why the question arises whether the reader - who is unfamiliar with the issues discussed, will be able to apply (repeat) the proposed method? Maybe the solution is adding a "scheme" of methodological proceedings (step by step in point 3.1). It will increase the cognitive values of the study. In addition, the form of citing the literature in the text the are some editorial mistakes – so they require reconstruction (see: editorial requirements). The Authors point out, that their method is innovative one, so I think they have to prove it can be successfully implemented.
I leave the final decision on the scope of correction to the Authors.
Author Response
Thank you for your comments that all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper. We tired our best to improve the manuscript and made some changes in revised version. These changes will not influence the content and framework of the paper. A revised manuscript with correction sections in red marked was attached for easy check/editing purpose. The main responds to the comments are as following:
Point 1: A "scheme" of methodological proceedings is needed for international solutions so the methodology used can be multiplied in other research projects.
Responds 1: We have add a methodological proceeding in part 4 (analysis and result) to the suggestion, together with a workflow framework to gain people`s understanding. And we further discussed the applicability of this approach in part 5 (after the summary). It is really true as the suggested that a generic perspective is important to help trace all cities growth but not only localized in region or culture background confined.
Point 2: Some editorial mistakes in literature citing.
Responds 2: The editorial mistakes have been checked and corrected in revised manuscript.
We appreciate for the warm work earnestly, and hope the correction will meet with approval. Thank you very much for your good comments and suggestions.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The new version of the text keeps needing a proper translation into English.
It is impossible to understand the revised text that was resubmitted.
