Deciphering the Evolution, Frontier, and Knowledge Clustering in Sustainable City Planning: A 60-Year Interdisciplinary Review
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe article on sustainable urban planning (SUP), underpinned by an extensive bibliometric analysis, is a noteworthy contribution to the field. It is a milestone in understanding the trajectory of sustainable urban planning research. The meticulous application of bibliometric analysis to decades of literature is both innovative and instructive. While the core content and structure of the article are commendable, slight enhancements in areas like data visualization, historical context, and methodological detail will further its excellence. These refinements will not only elevate the article's academic value but also increase its accessibility to practitioners and policymakers. By adding depth to the discussion on research gaps and integrating a wider array of case studies, your work stands to be an essential resource in SUP, effectively bridging historical insights with the current and future challenges in urban planning. However, slight modifications could further polish its excellence. See below for specific comments.
Specific comments:
*Page1-2: Does the article effectively contextualize the evolution of SUP research from 1964 to 2023? In addition, mention should be made of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations
*Page8 line 214: Is the methodology for data retrieval and analysis well-explained and justified? Please explain the basis and significance of using the Web of Science category appropriately.
*Page10 Figure 3: Are the bibliometric visualizations effectively interpreted? Do they add clear value to the understanding of the SUP research trajectory? Please enhance visual elements with explanatory captions and consider simplifying complex visuals for better reader comprehension.
*Page14 line 380: Figure 5 reveals that while certain studies appear isolated, others demonstrate close interrelations.
*Page19 line552: Does the review maintain a balanced perspective, considering various dimensions and global contexts of SUP? Ensure the inclusion of diverse case studies and perspectives from different geographical and socio-economic backgrounds, particularly for countries and regions that are underemphasized yet warrant attention, this aligns with the focus of the United Nations' sustainable development goals.
Please conduct a thorough check of citations and update references to include the most recent and relevant literature.
Author Response
December 5, 2023
Dear Referees and Editors,
Subject: Revision of [Sustainability] Manuscript ID: sustainability-2737530
I am writing in response to the reviews of our manuscript titled " Deciphering the Evolution, Frontier, and Knowledge Clustering in Sustainable City Planning: A 60-Year Interdisciplinary Review " submitted to Sustainability. First and foremost, I would like to express my gratitude to you for the insightful comments and suggestions. We have carefully considered and addressed each comment and have made significant revisions to the manuscript accordingly.
Below, I provide a point-by-point response to the comments:
Comment 1: Page1-2: Does the article effectively contextualize the evolution of SUP research from 1964 to 2023? In addition, mention should be made of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations.
Response: Thank you for your feedback. We have made significant adjustments to the introduction section to address the shortcomings you pointed out. The content about SDGs is mentioned in the line 55-62.
Comment 2: Page8 line 214: Is the methodology for data retrieval and analysis well-explained and justified? Please explain the basis and significance of using the Web of Science category appropriately.
Response: During the exploration conducted between lines 214 and 216, we sought pertinent literature and leveraged the research findings of others concerning WOS classification as the foundational framework for our scientific utilization of WOS categorization.
Comment 3: Page10 Figure 3: Are the bibliometric visualizations effectively interpreted? Do they add clear value to the understanding of the SUP research trajectory?
Suggestion: Enhance visual elements with explanatory captions and consider simplifying complex visuals for better reader comprehension.
Response: Thank you for your input. Subsequent to your suggestion, we have refined and adjusted Figure 3, enhancing its visual appeal and explanatory efficacy. In addition, we have supplemented explanatory notes and introductions for the pertinent information in Figure 3, as detailed in lines 264-267 and 277-281.
Comment 4: Page14 line 380: Figure 5 reveals that while certain studies appear isolated, others demonstrate close interrelations.
Response: We appreciate the valuable feedback from the reviewer. Following a thorough examination, we identified substantial misinterpretations in the description of Figure 5. Consequently, we have implemented the following corrections: Throughout this period, numerous emerging research topics and directions, relatively isolated in nature, surfaced, demonstrating a minimal correlation with conventional systematic research themes and directions.
Comment 5: Page19 line552: Does the review maintain a balanced perspective, considering various dimensions and global contexts of SUP? Ensure the inclusion of diverse case studies and perspectives from different geographical and socio-economic backgrounds, particularly for countries and regions that are underemphasized yet warrant attention, this aligns with the focus of the United Nations' sustainable development goals.
Response: Thank you for your suggestion. In response, we have incorporated pertinent descriptions into Chapter 4, aligning with the emphasis on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and fulfilling your specified requirements (see line 469-475).
Comment 6: Citation and Reference Quality: Are all references cited appropriately and up-to-date? Conduct a thorough check of citations and update references to include the most recent and relevant literature.
Response: Thank you for your suggestion. We have revised the references to include the latest, influential, and high-quality sources, prioritizing them over older references with less current relevance.
In addition to these specific points, we have also conducted a thorough review of the entire manuscript to improve its overall clarity and readability. We believe that these revisions have significantly strengthened our paper and have addressed the concerns raised by the reviewers.
We appreciate the opportunity to revise our manuscript and hope that the changes meet the approval of Sustainability. We look forward to the possibility of our work being published in your esteemed journal.
Thank you very much for your time and consideration.
Sincerely,
Fan Zhang
College of Landscape Architecture, Nanjing Forestry University
No. 159 Longpan Road
Suojin Village Street
Xuanwu District
Nanjing City, Jiangsu Province, 210037
China
Phone: (+86-25)-18913855338
Email: [email protected]
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThis is a valuable review of sustainable city planning. Interesting information such as historical background of the research related to this subject, features of the research field, and geographical features were integrated. However, it is difficult to understand the research results accumulated in this research field from this manuscript. It is necessary to summarize and describe research results on research topics that many researchers paid attention to in each period. These modifications are requested to the authors.
Author Response
December 5, 2023
Dear Referees and Editors,
Subject: Revision of [Sustainability] Manuscript ID: sustainability-2737530
I am writing in response to the reviews of our manuscript titled " Deciphering the Evolution, Frontier, and Knowledge Clustering in Sustainable City Planning: A 60-Year Interdisciplinary Review " submitted to Sustainability. First and foremost, I would like to express my gratitude to you for the insightful comments and suggestions. We have carefully considered and addressed each comment and have made significant revisions to the manuscript accordingly.
Below, I provide a point-by-point response to the comment:
Comment 1: It is difficult to understand the research results accumulated in this research field from this manuscript.
Response: Thank you for your invaluable suggestion. To enhance comprehension of the research achievements amassed in the field of SUP, we provide succinct introductions to the accomplishments of SUP research institutes across different time periods. Lines 542-545 present a brief overview of achievements before 1990; lines 545-550 introduce research milestones from the 1990s and 2000s; lines 550-554 highlight results from the 2010s; and lines 554-558 offer a concise summary of research achievements and future trends since 2020. Additionally, we have refined the relevant content to facilitate a clearer understanding of the SUP research results presented in this article. This includes the incorporation of the number of publications related to urban planning (UP) during the same period in section 3.1.1 (refer to lines 176-178) and rectifying descriptive errors identified during the graph analysis (refer to lines 416-419).
Comment 2: It is necessary to summarize research results on research topics that many researchers paid attention to in each period.
Response: Thank you for your invaluable suggestion. We have systematically compiled the research topics and achievements within different periods of SUP research, drawing insights from graph information and crucial literature data presented earlier (refer to lines 542-558). Recognizing the extensive and diverse nature of SUP research, covering a broad spectrum of content, we have opted to initiate the discussion with Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and curate a "Key Papers Collection" within this article. This collection serves to highlight pivotal SUP research outcomes. The rationale for this selection, aimed at capturing the most significant research contributions, is elucidated in Part Four (refer to lines 461-485). We are confident that this approach will aid readers in recognizing the paramount importance of SUP research and gaining a deeper understanding of the accumulated research achievements over time.
Comment 3: It is necessary to describe research results on research topics that many researchers paid attention to in each period.
Response: Thank you for your invaluable suggestion. Additionally, we have incorporated pertinent content across various sections of our article to comprehensively delineate the research topics and achievements of SUP across different periods. Noteworthy sections include the Introduction (refer to lines 54-67) and Section 4.1 (refer to lines 479-485). Aligning with the stipulations of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), we have accentuated SUP research topics and associated achievements within specific periods through keyword clustering. However, in the original text, we did not sufficiently indicate the temporal context, potentially diminishing the impact during readership. Consequently, we have introduced modifications and adjustments (refer to lines 382-383, 387-388, 395) to address this deficiency.
In addition to these specific points, we have also conducted a thorough review of the entire manuscript to improve its overall clarity and readability. We believe that these revisions have significantly strengthened our paper and have addressed the concerns raised by the reviewers.
We appreciate the opportunity to revise our manuscript and hope that the changes meet the approval of Sustainability. We look forward to the possibility of our work being published in your esteemed journal.
Thank you very much for your time and consideration.
Sincerely,
Fan Zhang
College of Landscape Architecture, Nanjing Forestry University
No. 159 Longpan Road
Suojin Village Street
Xuanwu District
Nanjing City, Jiangsu Province, 210037
China
Phone: (+86)-18913855338
Email: [email protected]
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe paper focus on the evaluation of literature about sustainable urban planning since the 1960s. For that, an extensive literature research ahs been conducted, mainly based on the Web of Science registered journal and papers.
The paper seems to focus on the Chinese audience and is not free of ideological statements (see line 29: “ Over the past 200 years, characterised by the dominant themes of ‘grand socialism’…”) . The paper should be reviewed carefully by the authors, and all ideologically shaped statements should be deleted. Some of the statements are only weakly justified, see e.g. in the introduction line 56ff (… stemming from a limited interdisciplinary and multifaced understanding of SUP…) , whereas a holistic approach has long been the state of the art, particularly in the area of sustainability. It is not clear how the gap between theory and application should be filled by this study. To summarize, the reasons given and the motivation for the study in the introduction are not clear.
As major method a bibliometric analysis is conducted. This method has a lot of drawbacks and it is discussed controversially in the scientific community. This should be at least mentioned in the paper. The main point is the missing transparency of the method applied; this holds also for the description of the method used in the paper (half a page with respect to 42es of the total paper).
The quantitative results (see also figure 1) have to be put in relation to the exponential increase of publication in the whole scientific community. This effect is well known. As the total number has been increasing, surely also the number of SUP papers has increased. For a better justification of the results, the number of SUP papers should be put into relation to for instance urban planning papers in general.
As ArcGIS is used (see line 188 and figure 2) for mapping, the “right” map projection should be used. Using the default Mercator projection for world wide statistical data is not appropriate. Use instead an equal-area projection.
Figure 3 is quite confusing, the authors should think of a better way of structuring to show the changes in the ranking.
In Figure 4 as well as in the text about citation trajectories, it is not clear how the new labels for the clusters have been selected. They seem to be very general (e.g. sports or history) and their relation to SUP (or the identified major fields in table) are not clear.
For table 4 the same as for table 3 holds.
Line 324 Price was never “the Father of Metrology”. Maybe the authors meant “Scientometrics”?
For the chapter 4 (Discussion) it is not clear, how the authors came to this collection of “key papers”. It seems to be a random selection, which are not justified by the result chapter. Here an explanation should be given, how the authors came to this selection.
Author Response
December 5, 2023
Dear Referees and Editors,
Subject: Revision of [Sustainability] Manuscript ID: sustainability-2737530
I am writing in response to the reviews of our manuscript titled " Deciphering the Evolution, Frontier, and Knowledge Clustering in Sustainable City Planning: A 60-Year Interdisciplinary Review " submitted to Sustainability. First and foremost, I would like to express my gratitude to you for the insightful comments and suggestions. We have carefully considered and addressed each comment and have made significant revisions to the manuscript accordingly.
Below, I provide a point-by-point response to the comments:
Comment 1: The paper seems to focus on the Chinese audience and is not free of ideological statements (see line 29: “ Over the past 200 years, characterised by the dominant themes of ‘grand socialism’…”) . The paper should be reviewed carefully by the authors, and all ideologically shaped statements should be deleted.
Response: I sincerely apologize for the identified concern. The term "grand socialism" was referenced from a critical article by Richard T. T. Forman, cited from J R. McNeill's "Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth Century World." Upon thorough examination, it became evident that the term carries a significant ideological connotation, contrary to our original intent. We have now changed "characterized by the dominant themes of 'grand society'" to "under the leadership of several industrial revolutions". Furthermore, we conducted a comprehensive review of the entire text, reaffirming the meanings of relevant terms to prevent such errors. We appreciate your diligent review and sincerely apologize for any confusion caused. Going forward, we commit to vigilant scrutiny to avoid recurrence of such issues.
Comment 2: Some of the statements are only weakly justified, see e.g. in the introduction line 56 (… stemming from a limited interdisciplinary and multifaced understanding of SUP…), whereas a holistic approach has long been the state of the art, particularly in the area of sustainability. It is not clear how the gap between theory and application should be filled by this study. To summarize, the reasons given and the motivation for the study in the introduction are not clear.
Response: Thank you for your invaluable feedback. The introduction section (see line 54-77) has undergone substantial revisions, notably incorporating crucial content such as the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations. In order to comprehensively elucidate the reasons and motivations behind this study, we have pointed out related to unclear terminology, overlapping concepts, and the absence of systematic research and practical frameworks in current SUP research.
Comment 3: As major method a bibliometric analysis is conducted. This method has a lot of drawbacks and it is discussed controversially in the scientific community. This should be at least mentioned in the paper. The main point is the missing transparency of the method applied; this holds also for the description of the method used in the paper (half a page with respect to 42es of the total paper).
Response: We appreciate your feedback on the revisions. We have meticulously documented the screening and organization methods for publication data, incorporating them into a new Appendix A (with subsequent appendices renumbered accordingly). This addition is aimed at transparently showcasing our comprehensive literature deletion and selection process, thereby bolstering the credibility and persuasiveness of our research. We hope you can understand and accept our approach.
Comment 4: The quantitative results (see also figure 1) have to be put in relation to the exponential increase of publication in the whole scientific community. This effect is well known. As the total number has been increasing, surely also the number of SUP papers has increased. For a better justification of the results, the number of SUP papers should be put into relation to for instance urban planning papers in general.
Response: Thank you for your valuable suggestion. We have revised Figure 1 by eliminating the line chart associated with the Web of Science subject category. A comprehensive explanation of the Web of Science subject category is provided in section 3.1.3 (line 241-243) and will not be reiterated in this context. Instead, we have incorporated a new line chart depicting the quantity of publications related to urban planning during the same period.
Comment 5: As ArcGIS is used (see line 188 and figure 2) for mapping, the “right” map projection should be used. Using the default Mercator projection for world wide statistical data is not appropriate. Use instead an equal-area projection.
Response: Thank you for your suggestion. We have revised the map projection in Figure 2 to the Lambert Equal Area Projection.
Comment 6: Figure 3 is quite confusing, the authors should think of a better way of structuring to show the changes in the ranking.
Response: Thank you for your invaluable suggestions. The dual map analysis function was integrated into CiteSpace software as early as October 2014, as a novel method for visualizing information, including the distribution of research publications, citation trajectories, and center of gravity drift. This functionality is currently widely cited. We have consulted and thoroughly examined the research introduction paper, "Patterns of Connections and Movements in Dual Map Overlays: A New Method of Publication Portfolio Analysis (Q2)," authored by R&D personnel. Additionally, we have extensively reviewed several high-quality papers that have successfully applied this method, such as "Visualized Analysis of Global Green Buildings: Development, Barriers, and Future Directions (Q1)," "Post control of Parkinson's disease: A visualized analysis based on Citespace knowledge graph (Q1)," and "Dynamic structures and emerging trends in the management of major traumas: a bibliometric analysis of publications between 2012 and 2021 (Q1)," among others. This review has confirmed the accurate utilization of the software. Furthermore, to enhance the graphical expressiveness, we have highlighted key information. Additionally, we have appended explanatory notes and introductions to the relevant details in Figure 3, located in lines 288-291 and 301-305.
Comment 7: In Figure 4 as well as in the text about citation trajectories, it is not clear how the new labels for the clusters have been selected. They seem to be very general (e.g. sports or history) and their relation to SUP (or the identified major fields in table) are not clear.
Response: Thank you for your valuable suggestions. We selectively replaced cluster labels, focusing on those that clearly did not align with the designated clusters. The replaced cluster labels are highlighted in bold in the second column of Table B in Appendix B. The original clustering was generated using CiteSpace's LLR algorithm, indicated by the bolded phrases in the fourth column of Table B in Appendix B. The derivation of the new label clustering resulted from discussions among the authors, considering primary cluster labels extracted from the second, third, and fourth columns of Table B in Appendix B. The issue of clustering labels lacking representativeness is currently widespread, with a dearth of effective solutions. Given the author's limited academic background, which hinders the fundamental resolution of this problem at the technical and methodological levels of bibliometrics, and considering the substantial number of publications in this study, our approach involves addressing this issue through manual judgment and modification. We have made the same revisions to the clustering labels in Figures 4 and 5.
Comment 8: For table 4 the same as for table 3 holds.
Response: In the prior revision comments, we did not encounter any pertinent remarks concerning Table 3. You may have intended to indicate that the revision suggestions for Figure 3 should be applied to Figure 4. In light of your feedback on Figure 3, we have implemented relevant modifications and provided explanations for the images involving clustering labels, encompassing Figures 3, 4, and 5.
Comment 9: Line 324 Price was never “the Father of Metrology”. Maybe the authors meant “Scientometrics”?
Response: Thank you for bringing the error to our attention. We have made corrections to the issue. We sincerely apologize for this oversight.
Comment 10: For the chapter 4 (Discussion) it is not clear, how the authors came to this collection of “key papers”. It seems to be a random selection, which are not justified by the result chapter. Here an explanation should be given, how the authors came to this selection.
Response: Thank you for your suggestion. Chapter 4 serves as a comprehensive discussion of the visualization graph results presented in this article. The relevant discussion directions are all drawn from the content of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We have explained this in the text (see line 461-485). In accordance with the requirements of SDGs and the visualization graph depicting SUP research, we have systematically organized the historical evolution and development trajectories of SUP research. Additionally, we have distilled crucial principles contributing to the sustainability of cities. Ultimately, we explore the path toward sustainable development and urban planning, endeavoring to establish a paradigm for implementation that can offer valuable assistance to researchers and practitioners.
In addition to these specific points, we have also conducted a thorough review of the entire manuscript to improve its overall clarity and readability. We believe that these revisions have significantly strengthened our paper and have addressed the concerns raised by the reviewers.
We appreciate the opportunity to revise our manuscript and hope that the changes meet the approval of Sustainability. We look forward to the possibility of our work being published in your esteemed journal.
Thank you very much for your time and consideration.
Sincerely,
Fan Zhang
College of Landscape Architecture, Nanjing Forestry University
No. 159 Longpan Road
Suojin Village Street
Xuanwu District
Nanjing City, Jiangsu Province, 210037
China
Phone: (+86)-18913855338
Email: [email protected]
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsI confirmed that the authors revised the manuscript appropriately.
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe paper has been improved substantially. All issues from the first review have been addressed.
