Urban-Rural Revitalization Space for Sustainable Social Value: An Evaluation in Redesigning Built Environment in Taiwan
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 1)
Dear authors.
I am grateful for the opportunity to evaluate the manuscript "Urban-Rural Revitalization Space for Sustainable Social Value: An Evaluation in Redesigning Built Environment in Taiwan". The quality of the manuscript has improved. However, there are a few comments.
1. As I wrote earlier, Figures 8-16 are very poorly presented. It is difficult for the reader to make out what is depicted on them. Increase them. You are not limited by the volume of the manuscript. The reader must look at them in great detail to understand what is depicted on them. Or put them in the appendices to the manuscript in a larger size (for example, make a drawing not 5 * 5 cm, but 10 * 10 cm – or in any other size convenient for reading).
2. Do not specify after each drawing – "Illustrated by Yuling Tsai, 2023". Provide this information in the "Author Contributions" section.
See in more detail the rules for the design of the manuscript.
Author Contributions: For research articles with several authors, a short paragraph specifying their individual contributions must be provided. The following statements should be used “Conceptualization, X.X. and Y.Y.; methodology, X.X.; software, X.X.; validation, X.X., Y.Y. and Z.Z.; formal analysis, X.X.; investigation, X.X.; resources, X.X.; data curation, X.X.; writing—original draft preparation, X.X.; writing—review and editing, X.X.; visualization, X.X.; supervision, X.X.; project administration, X.X.; funding acquisition, Y.Y. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.” Please turn to the CRediT taxonomy for the term explanation. Authorship must be limited to those who have contributed substantially to the work reported.
The article can be accepted after the responses to the comments.
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 1 Comments
Dear reviewer,
Thank you for your professional comments and suggestions to the Journal of land-253151. Thus, I would like to answer the overall reviews below.
Point 1: As I wrote earlier, Figures 8-16 are very poorly presented. It is difficult for the reader to make out what is depicted on them. Increase them. You are not limited by the volume of the manuscript. The reader must look at them in great detail to understand what is depicted on them. Or put them in the appendices to the manuscript in a larger size (for example, make a drawing not 5 * 5 cm, but 10 * 10 cm – or in any other size convenient for reading).
Response 1: All captions in Figures 5,7-10. 12-15 are modified to be readable as a new number of Figures 5,6 8-11, and 13-16. Also, more detailed figures are added in the Appendix A section.
Point 2: Do not specify after each drawing – "Illustrated by Yuling Tsai, 2023". Provide this information in the "Author Contributions" section.
Response 2: All figures have been modified without the illustration by Yuling Tsai.
Sincerely,
YuLing Tsai
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report (Previous Reviewer 3)
The revised version of the paper is more coherent. There is a well established link between research goals, methods used, results and main conclusions.
The main issues that have been raised in the review of original article have been properly addressed.
The methods used for the research are suitable, as they allow an in loco analysis with a high level of detail and precision of the material surveyed, as well as the prospective analysis.
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 2 Comments
Dear reviewer,
Thank you for your professional comments and suggestions to the Journal of land-2253151. And also the latest commetns mean a lot to all authors in this research.
Sincerely
Yuling Tsai
Reviewer 3 Report (Previous Reviewer 4)
Overall, the paper is significantly better than the last version I reviewed. There is still a great deal of copy editing that could improve the paper. In addition, I would remove all references to regeneration and replace with redesign or restoration which is closer to the authors intended meaning. With editing improvements, the paper will be a valuable contribution to the field. It is interesting to read such a detailed study of the renovation potential and systematic approach to school architecture.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 1 Comments
Dear reviewer,
Thank you for your professional comments and suggestions to the Journal of land-253151. Please see the attached file for the review response.
Sincerely,
YuLing Tsai
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
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
Dear authors.
I am grateful for the opportunity to review the manuscript "Urban-Rural Revitalization Space for Sustainable Social Value: An Analysis of Architecture Regeneration Design System".
The article is extremely interesting and relevant, but I think it should be published in the architectural journal. For example, https://www.mdpi.com/journal/architecture or https://www.mdpi.com/journal/buildings
Despite the broad title of the article, it has a narrow research field and is devoted to a narrow problem.
The following comments will help to significantly improve the quality of the article.
1. Captions to Figures 5, 7-10, 12-15 are poorly readable. Increase the captions or the size of the drawings. This will help the reader to better understand what is depicted in the drawings.
2. The list of sources in the manuscript is very small. Expand the list of references. Give a more detailed review of the literature on the problem under study in the world, in other countries. Give a comparison of the data you received with other regions of the world in "Discussion"
3. Clearly separate the "Results" and "Discussion" from each other. The reader should clearly understand the specific results and the discussion of these results.
4. Specify the title of the article more clearly.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Thank you for your professional comments and suggestions to the journal of land-2189124. Thus, I would like to answer the overall reviews in the attached file.
Thank you very much
Sincerely,
Yuling Tsai
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The „Urban-Rural Revitalization Space for Sustainable Social Value: An Analysis of Architecture Regeneration Design System” deals with a less explored aspect of sustainability: the regeneration possibilites of unused social infrastructure.
The paper has many merits, including:
· the novelty of the topic that could contribute to the ongoing discussion of social sustainability
· the meticulousness of the Material and Methods and Results sections
· the amount and quality of figures and tables considerably improve the Results section
However, I have three main concerns about the paper:
The scope of the paper is very limited. The authors should try to add more context in the Introduction to better embed the paper in the ongoing scientific debate. Possible aspects to discuss: how widespread is the issue of not functional education buildings (in Taiwan, or in other sides of the world). What other attempt are made to deal with this situation, what are their advantages and disadvantages?
The Conslusions and Recommendations section also could be extended a bit to reflect to a wider context, and make a much clearer point how this new architectural programming is the right approach for the revitalisation of un/ or underused infrastructure.
The English of the paper is quite poor and makes it difficult to read. A thorough grammatical overview (preferably an other person besides the authors) is needed.
Otherwise, I think the paper is good, and after some minor improvements, I recommend its publication.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Thank you for your professional comments and suggestions to the journal of land-2189124. Thus, I would like to answer the overall reviews in the attached file.
Thank you very much
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
The paper is presented in a structured way, and it is easy to read. Some figures, due to the size of the written information, are difficult to analyse as well as understand the message intended to transmit by the authors. Nevertheless, some issues should be considered, in order to make the text clearer, more objective and ready for global dissemination (and with the caveat of the Western/European vision of the referee):
- The issue of equipment abandoned due to the tendencies of school population loss, or even those that are equated in rehabilitations in order not to observe their closure in the short term, is a common situation in countries with an age pyramid in the shape of "urn". In this sense, and as the authors refer in the last paragraph of item 3.3.1, the whole process should go through an interdisciplinary conception (as well identified in figure 16), something that definitely does not seem to be reflected in the text.
- The question is whether the whole process of redesigning the building and the surrounding space should not be a co-creation between the team of architects and other areas of knowledge - landscape architects, geographers, among others - but essentially with the neighbouring citizens. The authors write "NanHua elementary school completely redesigned the outdoor area into a new environment where the neighborhood can also participate and use the space at any time" and I question: where did the co-creation come in? What is the role of the potential users of the spaces in their own definition of needs as spaces for future enjoyment? How was the relationship between the built and the surrounding space made (the mentioned role of landscape architecture and/or geography)?
- Although they refer at different points to this interaction with the neighbouring population, neither in the methodology nor in any other point do the authors refer to what methodology was used (and what was the dimension of these debates);
- In the case of point 6 of the conclusion, when the authors refer to "The risk of disaster prevention and mitigation programs or requirements should be reconsidered in the redesign process that can make the future public space much more security than before regeneration", it is not possible to understand what are the risks involved in this point (as well as in the rest of the text).
The work of architects who have developed these themes of school architecture, such as Peter Hubner; Herman Hertzberger; Henri Sanoff, or even the work of the current nordic school architecture - see e. g. Buildings (2022), 12, 392 - would bring value to this paper. In this particular case, we believe more relevance should be given bibliographical references, something that immediately seems to reveal a state of the art that is reflected as "poorly achieved".
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Thank you for your professional comments and suggestions to the journal of land-2189124. Thus, I would like to answer the overall reviews in the attached file.
Thank you very much
sincerely
Yuling Tsai
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
The quality of writing and structure of argument needs significant improvement. Consider calling the subject something other that regenerative school architecture. The work does not build or connect in anyway to the history of scholarship in Regenerative design.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Thank you for your professional comments and suggestions to the journal of land-2189124. Thus, I would like to answer the overall reviews in the attached file.
Thank you very much
Sincerely,
Yuling Tsai
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
