Review Reports

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper contributes the wide scope of strengthen knowledge of evolutive urban systems. It mainly presents the results of the application of urban models, comparing their fitness, on the basis of new source of data for comparing urban trajectories worldwide (ref. GHS).

The theoretical background in sections 2 and 3 is rich in references to the relevant literatures on urban models taken into account for the proposed research. These sections, readable for experts in the specific topics (less for not expert), are proportioned in the whole work and really useful as a finalized short review of main scientific references 

The authors also reported global reliability check of the used db, confirming the robustness of the data together with the methodological one.

The section 5 presents the comparison of four dynamic models assessing urban growth including the identification of pertinent explanatory factors in the discussion of the results.

Gibrat model family is recognized as the most approximate way of predicting urban trajectories, especially for the Largest cities, while while smaller cities are better represented by Marius economic model.

Concerning the declared "complementarity" of the models additional critical explanation should be payed in order to define such complementarity.

In the final part of the conclusion I have to point out the generic use of the "sustainability" term concerning the systems of cities: "We can have confidence in the future of cities because of the well observed robustness and sustainability of systems of cities". -"...perhaps is a guarantee of the 587 sustainability of the systems that they construct at the world scale".  According to my perspective it could be staten exactly the contrary as we have no evidences of the sustainability of current urbanization form and we are working as planners and geographers in providing effective solutions in order to stimulate a sustainable transition from the current urbanization models to better ones. But mainly because the paper doesn't argued on sustainability variables, indicators or evaluations. Such statements should be changed accordingly to the paper results or better clarified. 

minor rev:

line 269 GHSL instead of GSHL

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The article is very interesting, well developed and theoretically-methodologically grounded in the main geographical debate.

I just suggest to widen the analysis in the last section, by better scrutinizing limits and critical aspects of the research, since a critical overview about the disadvantages of such a methodological approach could make the whole research more robust.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

This article discusses the multi-scale dynamics of urban systems.

The major concern in this article is that the authors did not explain current context of urban governance and necessity of empowering urban governance through an alternative way.

Some minor concerns are as follows:

1. The writing style is difficult to understand for the general readers.

There are many such complex statements in the manuscripts. The complexities of such statements degrade the reading standard of the manuscripts. Therefore, the manuscript requires extensive revision.

2. The project named "GeoDiverCity" has already done issues relevant policies by taking the population at the world scale. Only the new datasets have been used by the authors and applied them. If not, what is the relevant of the work for the remote countries, African countries, etc. The datasets used doesn't seem to be used at the world scale in this paper.
3. The paper starts with the statement "The current science of cities can provide a useful foundation for future urban policies - ". Authors need to understand that a research/journal paper is targeted for a broader audience and at the same time the visibility of the paper should be excellent. From this statement, I didn't understand the meaning of "current science of cities". If I am not clear with "current science of cities", how can I understand the foundation of it.
4. Likewise, the "urban policies" are bifurcated issues. Authors need to understand the basics of it before start reading this paper. Without this, the meaning of the above statement is irrelevant. The abstract needs to be improvised accordingly.
5. There are many long sentences and irrelevant words used. For example, in line 553,

"The essential point of evolutionary theory is to take into consideration the spatio-temporal dimension of the urban realm The aim is to link the development of cities to the many and diverse interrelations that make cities, since their emergence, entities that are not isolated, but on the contrary interdependent in their evolution, to the point of constituting “systems of cities”.

I think, this sentence can be broken in short sentences.

6. The curves in Figure 5 indicate very narrow variation. Authors are suggested to apply autoregressive model along so as to form more optimized results
7. How two different objectives can be exemplified for two different cities? Because normally, Marius model clearly says about spatial/temporal dimensions of different domains, not with only one. Here, authors have used a city as one domain. This has to be explicitly explained.
8. Some typos should be corrected.

e.g., In line no 36 it should be "other" instead of "Other". Similarly, in line 49, the following statement. In line 554 there should be period after “realm”.

10. Citations and abbreviations in the abstract should be avoided, unless it is very necessary. Also, abbreviations are used without defining.

 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

I think this paper might be of good quality, but it is out of scope for this journal:

• the paper rightfully starts by pointing out the import role of cities conurbations for sustainable development. However, the core of this paper is not focusing on this issue, but on the dynamics of the development of conurbations. The analysis, using model etc. is beyond the scope of my expertise. However, there are no relevant conclusions any implications for Sustainable Development. For example the dilemma between the negative metabolic impacts of urbanization versus the potential to create cities that have very low metabolic impacts (due to economies of scale and symbiosis) does not play any role.
• So I would advise to transfer this paper to an urban development journal. I hacve the impression that this is a good paper, but I do not have the expertise for an authoritative judgmnent

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

This paper is already available online. 

Raimbault, Juste, Eric Denis, and Denise Pumain. "Empowering Urban Governance through Urban Science: Multi-scale Dynamics of Urban Systems Worldwide." arXiv preprint arXiv:2005.10007 (2020).