Polycentric Urban Spatial Structure Identification Based on Morphological and Functional Dimensions: Evidence from Three Chinese Cities

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

(1) The reviewer believes that quantifiable key results need to be appropriately added to the abstract and conclusion. In this way, readers can quickly obtain useful quantitative information. And this can attract readers' interest in reading.

(2) The study mentioned that relevant studies were conducted using Hangzhou, Wuhan, and Nanning, three Chinese cities at different stages of economic development, as examples. Why choose these three cities instead of other cities at the same level of development?

(3) It is evident that relevant research has been widely conducted. So, the innovation and highlights of the author's research need to be revealed in the manuscript.

(4) The subgraphs in Figure 1 should be clear. In addition, each subgraph needs to be labeled with latitude and longitude. You should know that readers are not necessarily Chinese.

(5) the signaling data of China Mobile phones were used for investigation. Does the process of obtaining research data involve legal issues?

(6) Formula 13 in page 7 needs to be supported by citing some references. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oceaneng.2024.117029, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.molliq.2023.121394

(7) In Table 2, there are no R2 exceeds 0.5. A lower R2 value does not necessarily indicate that the fitting results are not very good.

(8) Similar figures such as Figures 3 and 4 need to be replaced with clearer ones.

The paper needs to be polished by some native english speakers or institute. Long sentences are common in this work. For example, the sentence "The traditional urban economic spatial structure is considered to be a typical monocentric or concentric circle structure, with the increase of the distance between a region and CBD, the economic activities of a city spread outward from CBD, and the influence of CBD on the city gradually decreases, such as monocentric city economic model of BitRent Curves[1].".

Author Response

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Reviewer 2 Report

The article is certainly interesting and relevant, and expands the scientific understanding of urban spatial structure and methods of its study. Nevertheless, the article should strengthen certain aspects related to the presentation of research materials.

Introduction should be enhanced by including significance of researching into urban spatial structure in the context of current economic conditions. What are the research questions of the article? Please explain the choice of cellphone signaling data for you research aim. In the literature review, please add some works which use these data for spatial analysis (if any).

Expand TAZ (abstract), CBD and other acronyms by first mentioning, then start using their abbreviations.

3.1 Research area: Why the cities of Hangzhou, Wuhan and Nanning were chosen for this analysis? Probably the first paragraph in 3.1 could be given in the form of a table with the statistical information provided. How many administrative districts are there in these cities? Is there any connection between the administrative subdivision and the results obtained?

Formulas (1)-(17) need transcripting their components

Conclusions are rather weak. Enhance the conclusion section in line with the research questions. Include managerial implications, more limitations and future research directions.

Author Response

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Reviewer 3 Report

This paper takes Hangzhou, Wuhan and Nanning, three Chinese cities at different stages of development, as cases to identify employment centers from morphological and functional dimensions, and compares the differences in the spatial distribution pattern of the identification results, and verifies which method has the stronger explanatory power, so as to analyze the differences in the characteristics of Chinese urban polycentric development structure at different development stages and the reasons for the differences, and put forward relevant spatial development policy recommendations. In this paper, a polycentric recognition method based on spatial distribution and interaction is proposed for morphological and functional dimensions, which can make up for the defects of single-dimension recognition results, and compares cities from a two-dimensional perspective, reflecting the characteristics of two-dimensional polycentric urban development.

1. The author has spent a lot of time on the Employment center identification method in literature review and result analysis, so, should think about how it relates to the title.

2. Does this article mention employment centers, town centers, industrial centers, which together make up the urban spatial structure?

3. The results show that the polycentric spatial distribution characteristics of morphological and functional dimensions are quite different. So which dimension can better reflect the spatial structure of the city?

4. The results show that the polycentric spatial distribution characteristics of morphological and functional dimensions are quite different. Are these differences due to different approaches or are they also influenced by the stage of urban development?

Author Response

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Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

(1) Figure 1 in the manuscript is still not standardized or clear enough. For example, there is a misalignment between the annotation of the subgraph and the image itself.

(2) The conclusion of the manuscript is too complex and lacks emphasis, requiring simplification and rewriting.

(3) The reviewer suggests writing the highlights of the summary directly to the end of the Introduction section. This way, the innovative nature of the research is clear at a glance.

(4) How did the author obtain these extremely private communication data? How to get authorization? This data is extremely private and legally institutions or individuals other than the public security organs, procuratorial organs, and courts have no right to obtain and use it.

(5) The suggested references for the first round of review are recommended to be cited.

(6) Although the data used in this study passed the significance test, the fitting coefficients were indeed not high enough. This indicates that the fitting models or formulas obtained by the authors are insufficient to describe the patterns presented by the data.

(7) In the revised manuscript, the presentation of Figures 3 and 4 is still not good enough and not standardized enough. The reviewer suggests that the author replace the drawings with clearer and more standardized ones.

From the editing traces of the entire manuscript, it can be seen that the author did not conduct excessive language checks on the manuscript. There are still some non-standard and confusing expressions in the manuscript.

Author Response

Thank you very much for taking the time to review this manuscript. Please find the detailed responses below and the corresponding revisions/corrections highlighted/in track changes in the re-submitted files.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

All the comments have been addressed by the authors.

Author Response

Thank you very much for taking the time to review this manuscript. Please find the detailed responses below and the corresponding revisions/corrections highlighted/in track changes in the re-submitted files.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 3

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper can be accepted for publication now.