Blending Bottom-Up and Top-Down Urban Village Redevelopment Modes: Comparing Multidimensional Welfare Changes of Resettled Households in Wuhan, China

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors examined the multidimensional effects of urban village redevelopment based on questionnaire-based surveys of resettled residents. The research methodologies are reasonable, and the findings are justifiable. However, there are still a few aspects that should be improved to make the paper publishable. As the article is coherent and well-organised, I focus here only on a few major points, which are hopefully easy for the authors to take into account in the revision.

 

• Despite many interesting findings, the theoretical contribution is not clearly stated in the Conclusion section. How do the findings contribute to new knowledge in the context of the proposed conceptual framework (in section 3)? How can this research be linked to the wider literature in sustainable urban development and regeneration (suggest reading, for instance, https://doi.org/10.1068/a39293 and https://doi.org/10.1177/2399808319864972)?

 

• It is not clear why Wuhan is an important case for research. Why is this case representative? How the lessons learnt from this case can be extended to the other cases (e.g. inside and outside China)? The authors need to justify the case representativeness to attract a wider audience without local knowledge.

 

• The limitation of the study and recommendations for future studies should be added. For instance, as the current study only focuses on two sites, the authors should clarify what the limitations might be and how to derive more comprehensive empirical evidence in the future?

 

Author Response

the reply please see the attachment

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

I think this is a very interesting study looking at urban redevelopment in Wuhan, China.  The study identifies two paths of development for the region and demonstrates the strengths and weaknesses of each path.  Overall, the authors provide a solid explanation of the key literature, a superior explanation and execution of the analysis and an outstanding summary and conclusion.  For the most part, the paper is well written.  I would give the manuscript one final proof read.  I found a few minor usage errors in the paper.  For example, on line 55 I'm not sure you need "of" in the sentence.  Also, in line 71, I would use "that is" instead of "that's".  

My only other concern is in line 142.  You use the terms "objectivist and subjectivist."  I did not find and explanation for the terms or any other reference to the terms in the paper.  I would suggest you either include the terms in the literature review, explain the terms or remove them as they do not seem to significantly add to the literature, analysis or conclusions.  

Overall, I think the paper would be an outstanding edition to the journal.  It is well written and well researched.  I really enjoyed reading the paper.   

Author Response

The reply please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The topic of the paper is important and relevant for Sustainability. There are, however, a number of flaws that reduces the quality of the study. Among these, more development of the background section, clarifications, and a better structure of the manuscript are needed. The study sample seems to be quite heterogeneous, and rather small, particularly for the proposed model. Further comments are included as follows:

In the Introduction section, what is the research gap, what is the importance of this study, and how do you intend to bridge the gap must be stressed.

What is meant by different urban renewal modes need to be clarified.

In the background section, a more comprehensive literature review of key related studies should be carried out in the context of top-down and bottom-up models.

The research goals should be clearly stated. Moreover, the paper will gain clarity and a better structure if instead of presenting a list of questions in the introduction, where their relation to existing literature is not evident, authors will formulate specific research hypotheses, each of which should be appropriately supported by a relevant literature.

In Figure 1: For the sake of clarity, replace ´Mode difference¨ for ¨Redevelopment mode difference¨. For consistency with what is written in the text, change ´Welfare change´ for ¨Household welfare¨

In the background section, explain in larger level of detail the different components of Welfare change, including economic and living conditions, natural environment, psychological conditions and social security, and how they related with Satisfaction in general and Satisfaction for redevelopment in particular.

In Section 3.1, explain in further detail what is meant by equity and efficiency, and illustrate these notions with examples.

Section 4.1: The descriptions of the top-down and bottom up modes of urban village redevelopment in Wuhan must be supported by references from literature.

Section 4.2: A more detailed description of the survey questionnaire must be provided regarding the selection and inclusion of the items and the literature from where they were identified. Although the variables have been justified and supported by literature, the items themselves not. Justify why these items were included to explore the study variables and not others? How many items were included for each variable?

There are problems with the Method. There is no information about the Procedure. Information about participants were selected and approached is lacking. Authors say randomly, but this indicates a lack of criteria and the potential risk of an heterogeneous and non-representative sample. This is reflected in the large differences regarding education, age, and income. Moreover, there is a substantial difference in the sample size between the 126 households in the XC and 201 in the GYTC case studies. Why these number of participants?

Information about how long took to respond to the survey, who distributed it, when, etc. should be provided.

The control variables should be clearly depicted in Figure 1

First present the Discussion section, and then the Conclusions. Also acknowledge study limitations, and perhaps a future study.

The Conclusions section is mainly a summary of results; conclusions should mainly inform what is the bottom line of this study. What can be really concluded as take home message from the research? What is the main contribution of this study, and how it differs from previous related studies? How the study can contribute from the sustainability perspective? Limitations should be also acknowledged.

 

Author Response

The reply please see the attachement.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper has been significantly improved. All my concerns have been well addressed by the authors. 

Author Response

     This manuscript is largely improved with the comments of reviewer,thank you very much for  your help.

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper was largely improved, and most of the comments from the previous round of review were considered. In consequence, the paper has gained in organization, structure, transparency and clarity, development and depth. The study and its goals are now better framed in relevant literature background. The connection to Sustainability is more evident. There are, however, a few aspects that still demands the attention from the author, which are commented below.

There are still problems with the English. It is suggested that a professional copyeditor who is also a native English speaker will check the manuscript.

Clarify the sentence “Compared with the top-down mode, the stakeholders of bottom-up are relatively equal in the bottom-up mode (Liu, Huang, & Zhu, 2019).” and avoid word repetition. L 176

Regarding the distribution of the survey, author says: “Random means that, we choose the last one out of every five people we meet in the doorway, main roads, etc.”. In my view, this randomized approach for the survey represents serious problems for the study, affecting the homogeneity of the group, and representativeness of the population. This issue should be clearly acknowledged as a study limitation. L 508

Moreover, the issue of the relatively small sample and the differences in size between the 126 households in XC and the 201 in GYTC used in this study was not completely justified. Therefore, this should be acknowledged as another study limitation.

Although Section 6 has been improved considerably, there are still confusing issues.  First, change the heading to "Discussion and Conclusions", and restructure subsection 6.1 in this order, that is first a discussion of the results and then conclusions.

The Limitation section mixes study limitations with other issues. Hence, move and relocate the important paragraphs “Sustainability does make…with urban village development” from Section 6.3 dealing with limitations, to the discussion section. L 112 – 1130.

The paragraph “Secondly, welfare changes… in future study” is unclear. L 1137 – 1139.

Author Response

The manuscript is significantly improved with the comments of reviewer, thank you very much for your help! The detail response please see the attachment.thanks again.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx