Spatial Characteristics of Suburban Villages Based on Spatial Syntax
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 3)
The paper is interesting, but several important issues need to be clarified.
In the introduction, it is necessary to provide a comparison of other methods for evaluating spatial characteristics of suburban villages in relation to Spatial Syntax and to clearly indicate their advantages and disadvantages.
The second chapter is completely in the wrong place. Given that the scientific contribution should be global, after the Introduction it is necessary to describe the Methods and methodology that are globally applicable, and after that comes the description of the case study, which should not be a separate chapter but part of the Results.
The Discussion, in principle, should logically precede the Conclusion, and it should clearly define how your research provides a scientific step forward in relation to existing research. In this part, it is again necessary to refer to the papers from the Introduction that are closest to your paper in terms of research and to clearly specify strengths and weaknesses.
In the conclusion, it is necessary to give the final thoughts of the author with a defined direction of future research.
Author Response
Your comments are greatly appreciated, and I will respond to each reviewer's comments below:
- I have revised the introductory part to summarize the advantages and disadvantages of the method from two aspects: the analysis and evaluation of the spatial characteristics of villages using the spatial syntax method, and the study of the characteristics of the spatial characteristics of villages of the type of suburban villages.
- I adjusted the structure of the article and moved the original part of chapter 2 into the Method, the Method is the revised chapter 2, now the “Overview of the study area” as a part of the Method
- I revised and adjusted the position of the discussion and conclusion, summarized the strengths and weaknesses of this study in the last chapter of the discussion, and proposed the authors' directional measures for improving the methodological system and expectations for future research.Due to the geographical factors and the limitation of the study of village industrial structure, the adaptability of the research results of this study has some limitations, need to expand the database in the practice of follow-up and perfect method system, expectations for more area different landforms and the suburban village space form of industrial structure adjustment and reconstruction to provide certain reference and help to the revitalization of countryside in the new period.
Reviewer 2 Report (Previous Reviewer 1)
The revised version was improved a lot. The discussion section should be placed before the conclusion section.
Author Response
Your comments are greatly appreciated, and I will respond to each reviewer's comments below:
I revised and restructured the article by placing the discussion section before the conclusion section and adding the conclusion section, including the limitations of the study and expectations for future research.
Due to the limitation of the geographical factors and the proportion of agricultural industries in the villages under study, the adaptability of the research findings of this study has certain limitations, and it is necessary to expand the database and improve the methodological system in the follow-up practice process, expecting to provide certain references for the adjustment and reconstruction of the spatial forms of suburban villages with different landforms and different industrial structures in more areas, and help revitalize the countryside in the new era.
Reviewer 3 Report (New Reviewer)
The manuscript still has several grammatical errors and typos. All images should be included in high resolution and it is recommended not to use yellow color as it is not very visible
The novelty of the research should be emphasized more in the initial part of the manuscript.
Regarding the methodology applied, more explanation and bibliographical references are needed that emphasize the benefits of space syntax and the parameters that can be analyzed/researched especially in the field of mobility .
Therefore, we recommend reading the following research papers
1) Soltani, A., Allan, A., Javadpoor, M., & Lella, J. (2022). Space Syntax in Analysing Bicycle Commuting Routes in Inner Metropolitan Adelaide. Sustainability, 14(6), 3485.
2) Russo, A., Campisi, T., Tesoriere, G., Annunziata, A., & Garau, C. (2022). Accessibility and Mobility in the Small Mountain Municipality of Zafferana Etnea (Sicily): Coupling of Walkability Assessment and Space Syntax. In International Conference on Computational Science and Its Applications (pp. 338-352). Springer, Cham.
3) Yamu, C., Van Nes, A., & Garau, C. (2021). Bill Hillier’s legacy: Space syntax—A synopsis of basic concepts, measures, and empirical application. Sustainability, 13(6), 3394.
We need to better motivate the choice of the case study and define the limitations of the study in the concluding part of the text .
All acronyms should be written in extended form when they are used for the first time in the manuscript .
It is advisable to revise the title by making it more attractive .
Author Response
Your comments are greatly appreciated, and I will respond to each reviewer's comments below:
- I checked the content of the manuscript and corrected errors in the manuscript to the best of my ability; I corrected the incorrect use of acronyms in the original manuscript, and the acronyms were written in derivative form when they first appeared in the manuscript.
- I replaced the low-resolution images in the manuscript with images with a resolution of 300ppi, but some of the images had an initial resolution of less than 300, so this part of the image was not replaced. And I changed the color of the line in the image to make it more obvious.
- Thank you very much for the research paper you recommended for me. After studying and reading it carefully, I added the merits of the applied method and the novelty of this study in the section of the introduction.
- I revised the content of the conclusion section, summarized and analyzed the limitations of this study, and presented the authors' directional measures for improving the methodological system and expectations for future research. We found deficiencies in the research process. Due to the limitation of the geographical factors and the proportion of agricultural industries in the villages under study, the adaptability of the research findings of this study has certain limitations, and it is necessary to expand the database and improve the methodological system in the follow-up practice process, expecting to provide certain references for the adjustment and reconstruction of the spatial forms of suburban villages with different landforms and different industrial structures in more areas, and help revitalize the countryside in the new era.
- After careful consideration, Mao and I regret that we did not have a more attractive title to add to the article
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 3)
The authors have answered and included most of the reviewer's comments in the manuscript. The manuscript is significantly improved. For this reason, I recommend to accept it as it is for the next step.
Author Response
Thank you very much for your comments and affirmation on my manuscript. I added the novelty of the research in this revision and further improved the manuscript by using the English editing function provided by the journal
Reviewer 3 Report (New Reviewer)
I recommend reviewing the formatting of the manuscript in accordance with the journal template.
The manuscript still has some errors and typos
Check the authors' references. It is still necessary to better emphasize the novelty of the research
Once this is done, the paper will be eligible for publication
Author Response
Thank you very much for your comments and recognition of my manuscript,，I revised the manuscript according to the format of the template, and used the English editing service provided by the journal. On this basis, I revised the incorrect expression content in the introduction part and increased the novelty content of the research. The order of references in the manuscript was adjusted as a whole.
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
This manuscript aims to identify spatial characteristics of suburban villages across 8 typical villages in central Jilin Province. Unfortunately, the study is too crude and has some flaws.
The authors in the introduction simply state what has been studied without summarizing their characteristics and the shortcomings of their application, which should be further summarized. In addition, what is the current status of research on village space in the study area? What problems exist? What are the contributions of this research? Please specify.
Why choose axial analysis method? The manuscript did not explain clearly.
What are the reasons for choosing these eight villages? It is recommended to make a location map of the study area to make it clear to the reader where the study area is located.
The authors link the spatial structure of villages with the characteristics of industrial structure, only according to Jilin Province's own situation. Is this relationship universal? If there is no such relationship in other regions, the findings are not credible. Moreover, the fact that many parts of the manuscript are based on field research, but there is no relevant introduction in the manuscript, which is a serious problem.
The second part is not clear about the classification of the three village types. If it is based on the previous research results, please indicate; If it is the research result of this manuscript, please elaborate the classification basis.
The discussion section is too weak. The authors make recommendations only based on the study itself, without interaction with existing studies.
There is no conclusions section. Conclusions section should be separated from the discussion section..
L100 Where does the village level street planning come from? Please indicate the reference.
L130 Intergration should be Integration.
In the formula(1) ,what are MDi and n? What are the practical significance?
Please add latitude and longitude to the satellite images of Figures 1 and 2
Table2 should be changed to Figure 2 and the figure should be reformatted.
L132 “Intelligibility” should indicate the reference.
L170 -209 There is no reference to the figure.
The label in Figure2 is too small.
L217 bustling village? Please check the full text.
L236 where are the (a) and (b)?
The language of the full text is rough, and it is suggested to polish it.
Author Response
Thank you very much for your comments on my manuscript, and I will respond to your comments item by item in the following
1.In the introduction, the characteristics and shortcomings of the research method are added. The spatial syntax method is used to convert the correlation between spaces into mathematical topological relationships, and on this basis, the planning and design of village spaces are more scientific and rational, and the results are more universal. The main drawback is that at this stage, the research on spatial syntax is mainly focused on urban large-scale space, and the research on applying spatial syntax to village space is still relatively few, and the relevant empirical and theoretical research is less, and the methodological process is not very perfect.
Field visits and research have revealed that there are currently many unplanned street constructions in the suburban villages of Jilin Province, making residential compounds crammed together rigidly, lacking clear links and transitions between spaces, and the overall spatial structure of the countryside is unclear, with the street space only meeting the traffic function. Due to the lack of relevant experience and guidance, the landscape design and construction of most village spaces follows the path of the city, resulting in serious homogenization of the rural landscape, such as large hardened squares and an increasing number of pavilion buildings beside rural roads, and even a large number of southern-style whitewashed tiles built without regard to regional differences, losing the original northern rural appearance. In the village construction pilot or project, many of the public spaces converted from sites at the edge of village streets and lanes lack connection with the village and are not integrated, and the site configuration is limited to site hardening and fitness facilities, lacking seating pavilions to stay and stages to conduct activities, electricity facilities, greenery, and even poor drainage, which is not very attractive and makes it difficult for villagers to conduct diverse social activities. The current village space is obviously unable to adapt to the development of rural industries and the changing needs of residents, and the spatial form of the village needs to be reconstructed urgently.
The contribution of this study is to apply the spatial sentence method to study the correlation between the overall spatial morphological characteristics and industrial structure of suburban villages, to analyze and summarize the strategies of village planning and development, and to verify the correlation between spatial morphology and industrial structure of the remaining suburban villages in central Jilin Province using the methodological procedures of this study, expecting to provide some reference for the planning and development of the same type of villages.
2.The main methods of spatial syntax are axial analysis, convex spatial analysis and view field analysis. Its medial axis analysis method, which uses straight lines to string together and translate spatial systems according to the longest and least drawn principle, is applicable to traditional village streets and linear spaces of all sizes; the convex space method translates multiple actual spaces into systems of convex spaces, applicable to the study and treatment of small-scale spaces, building interiors and nodal spaces. The view field analysis method uses a grid of squares to translate spatial structures into a system of small squares, reflecting the degree of spatial compression and enclosure, which is suitable for large scale and non-linear spaces. This study is based on the village street planning form to study the overall spatial form of the village, and therefore the axis analysis method was chosen as the research method for the study.
The axial analysis method describes the relationships between axes by means of parametric variables such as integration, choiceability, intelligibility, depth values, connection values and control values. This study is a study of the overall spatial form of the village based on the street plan form of the village, so this study chooses the axis analysis method, which can establish an axis model based on the street plan and use the axis to reflect the spatial layout of the village, mainly using the degree of integration and intelligibility to analyse the spatial characteristics of the suburban villages in the central region of Jilin Province.
3.These eight villages have typical planar characteristics and to a certain extent can represent the spatial characteristics of suburban villages in the central region of Jilin Province.
The authors added a map of the location of the study area in the revised manuscript, which is shown in Figure 2 in the manuscript.
4.Villages in central Jilin province are an important part of Jilin villages, with 4,426 villages (as of 2018), accounting for 47.46% of the number of villages in the province. This study combines actual research and syntactic parsing results to link rural spatial structure with industrial structure characteristics, a relationship that is common in central Jilin Province, and this study expects to provide some reference for the planning and development of the same type of villages among 4426 villages in central Jilin Province.
5.The village classification is based on previous research results and is cited in the text
6.The manuscript was revised to add a discussion section, which was stated separately from the conclusion section
7.Upon examination of the manuscript, it was found that the village street plan was improperly formulated by the author; the correct formulation should be village spatial plane features
8.The words have been modified in the manuscript
- In the formula(1), where n is the topological meaning of the number of all nodes in the connected graph and MDi is the topological meaning of the mean depth. Depth values reflect the minimum number of connections that a space needs to pass through to reach other spaces.
10.Due to the large amount of latitude and longitude data, filling the data into the image would result in too small of a tab, so the latitude and longitude data is filled into the table in the form of text
11.Changed Table2 to figures 4-6 and reprocessed the figures
- Intelligibility has been noted with references
13.The main reference is the basic information and basic research of the villages in central Jilin Province, and the reference has been added to the village profile section of the manuscript
14.Figure 2 in the original manuscript has been relabeled, and Figure 7 in the revised manuscript
15.Revise the expression “bustling village” in the manuscript to “Renao village”
16.After checking the manuscript, it was found that the picture was labeled incorrectly, and has been revised to the correct label.
Reviewer 2 Report
Need to make more readable for the general users
Importance of the study is not well defined
Author Response
Thank you very much for your comments on my manuscript, and I will respond to your comments item by item in the following
1.The manuscript has been linguistically revised.
2.This study combines the actual research situation and syntactic parsing results to link the rural spatial structure with the industrial structure characteristics. Suburban villages in central Jilin province are an important part of villages in central Jilin province, and the number of villages is 4426 (as of 2018), accounting for 47.46% of the number of villages in the province. The development of villages in Jilin Province still faces many contradictions and challenges, quantitative description and parametric comparison analysis of the spatial configuration of suburban villages in central Jilin Province through spatial syntax theory, exploring the relationship between different types of village overall spatial forms and industrial adaptability, summarizing the spatial reconfiguration and development of suburban villages in central Jilin Province, expecting to provide some reference for the adjustment of spatial forms of the same types of villages in central Jilin Province It is expected to provide some reference for the adjustment and reconstruction of the same type of village space in central Jilin Province, and help revitalize the countryside in the new era.
Reviewer 3 Report
The topic of the paper is interesting, but the scientific contribution is rather vaguely presented and questionable. In the research the Depthmap software is used to analyze the integration and comprehensibility of village space in the central suburbs of Jilin Province through the quantitative interpretation of suburban village space and the correlation between its spatial morphological characteristics and industrial structure, based on space syntax theory.
What exactly is your scientific contribution? Applying the existing methodology to another area of ​​research is not an original scientific contribution. This qualifies as professional work.
The review of existing scientific literature is rather scarce. Although you state that there are very few papers that apply the same methodology for the purpose of identical/similar analysis, the literature review should also include an overview of the application of some other methodology for the same purposes and a clear indication of their advantages and disadvantages. It is necessary to apply the same to the chosen method.
Equally, it is necessary to make sure that all literature, including its numerical description, is correctly cited. Formulas (1) and (2) are not cited, and are taken from existing literature. Also, it is necessary to change the name of Table 2.
The main drawback of this paper is the imprecisely described scientific contribution. In the introduction, the authors should clearly specify the research hypothesis and objectives of the research, together with the scientific contribution. It is necessary to refer to the above in the description of the methodology, and especially in the discussion where it is necessary to state how your research improved existing scientific knowledge.
Author Response
Your comments are greatly appreciated, and I will respond to each reviewer's comments below:
1.The manuscript was revised to add an overview of the application of spatial syntax and its advantages and disadvantages from the literature review.
2.The manuscript was checked for correct citation of formulas, and Table 2 of the original manuscript was changed to a picture format and revised to pictures 4-6.
3.After the manuscript was revised, the scientific contribution of this study was added in the introduction, mainly applying the spatial syntax method to the more universal category of villages, suburban villages. Existing studies mainly focus on traditional villages, which have their special cultural heritage, while suburban villages are mainly influenced by cities, and their own rural appearance is not obvious or destroyed. In the context of rural revitalization, it is hoped that the spatial syntax theory can be applied to Jilin Province In the context of rural revitalization, we hope to quantitatively describe and parametrically analyze the spatial configuration of suburban villages in central Jilin Province, explore the relationship between different types of village spatial forms and industrial adaptability, and summarize the measures for spatial reconstruction and development of suburban villages in central Jilin Province, hoping to provide some reference for the adjustment and reconstruction of spatial forms of the same types of villages in central Jilin Province and help rural revitalization in the new era.
