Centralized Industrialization in the Memory of Places. Case Studies of Romanian Cities
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The topic and the contents of the paper are interesting but the structure of the manuscript can be improved.
The introduction should state the research background with a review of the main bibliographical references in order to highlight the originality of the research and why it is important. In the manuscript, the introduction is very brief, provides only some general information about the research topic and explains the objective but does not adequately describe the related scientific debate.
The research methodology and approach can be better described, even by integrating sections 2 and 3.
The presentation of results in Section 5 should highlight the application of the conceptual framework described.
Author Response
Response to Ref 1 :
Comment 1 : The introduction should state the research background with a review of the main bibliographical references in order to highlight the originality of the research and why it is important. In the manuscript, the introduction is very brief, provides only some general information about the research topic and explains the objective but does not adequately describe the related scientific debate.
R Comment 1 :
The Introduction section was extended by adding three paragraphs highlighting the purpose, hypothesis, originality of the scientific debate, and the representativeness of the case studies. The hypothesis is verified at the end of the paper (in the conclusions section), where the importance of the study is also highlighted.
The purpose of this study is to provide an analysis of how the oversized industrialization of the centralized economy period changed the urban toponymy, thus influencing the memory of places. In this sense, we hypothesize that the dysfunctions registered in terms of urban cultures as a result of the oversized industrialization policy, and in a broad sense, of the cultural policies pursued by the communist authorities could be entirely rolled back, disappearing once the disturbing factors themselves went extinct.
Despite a rich scientific literature devoted to toponymy during the centralized economy era, this issue has been only fleetingly addressed, either in the form of studies related to urban identity and image [2-3], [6], [8], to local development and regional planning [4-5], to urban culture and toponymy [9-10], [14-15], [18-26], [29-33], or in general toponymy works [16], [27-28]. Therefore, the original side to this study results from the deepening of the industrialization - deindustrialization - urban toponymy - memory of places relationship, applied in a representative space, though less studied from this point of view, of the former Communist Bloc: Romania.
As case studies, we have selected two cities that we deemed representative from this point of view: the country's capital, Bucharest, a metropolis with strong industrialized macro-regional functions during the centralized economy era and Galați, which ranks 6th in the national urban hierarchy, the largest steel centre and river and sea port in Romania, a poster-city for oversized development in an industrial field (steel) at odds with the tradition of places and the potential of the urban influence area.
Comment 2 : The research methodology and approach can be better described, even by integrating sections 2 and 3.
R Comment 2 :
We have developed the Methodology section, including the conceptual framework. However, we detached a section dedicated to literature (according to the 3th reviewer’s suggestions), which we have revised by discussing the content of the articles (according to the 2nd reviewer’s suggestions).
Comment 3 : The presentation of results in Section 5 should highlight the application of the conceptual framework described.
R Comment 3 :
For a better correlation between the description of the conceptual framework (now integrated in section 3) and its application at the level of the two case studies, the following paragraph was integrated in the beginning of sections 5:
The analysis of the case studies will start by highlighting the characteristics of the spatial identity of the two cities, an identity that impresses their urban functionality. In this approach, the maps will play an important role, cartographically illustrating the elements described in the text. The urban function, respectively its spatial expression (functional areas) is the consequence of the spatial identity of the city, but the urban dynamics can also be influenced by a second category of functions, resulting from political-administrative decisions. In the case studies we will present, political-administrative decisions will attract the industrial function (industrialization), thus disrupting the natural, inherent dynamics (in relation to the potential of areas of influence) of cities and influencing the memory of places. The tendency to rebalance the urban dynamics will be achieved through deindustrialization, tertiarization and reindustrialization in other fields.
We have intended to highlight the step-by-step applying of all the concepts described in the conceptual framework (i.e. the determinant one, the motor one and the resultant one) at the level of the case studies presented.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
This research looks at the evolution of place names in Romania. I think the evolution of place names is a very interesting and an important research topic. I have some concerns with the article. The literature review provides a list of articles related to the research, but no discussion of the content of the articles. The purpose of the literature review to ground your research within the larger academic discussion on topic. You start to discuss other cities with Soviet era names, but you don't place the discussion in a larger context of political and cultural development within the former "socialist" sphere. Without this academic grounding, I'm unsure of the purpose of your paper, other than a description of place name changes in Romania. You need to situate your research in the larger academic discourse.
I also would suggest you improve your legend on your maps. Move the description of the categories on the map to the legend of the map and not as part of the figure caption. You should also attempt to tie a discussion of the maps into the article. I'm unsure of the importance of the maps. Do they show a geographical pattern?
I would also suggest you edit the English language, grammar and usage in the paper. I found numerous examples of passive voice, misspellings and odd word choices that made the paper difficult to read. You might want to have a native English speaker review paper.
Overall, I enjoyed the paper topic. I would like to see the paper better tied into the academic literature and provide more of a discussion of the importance and geography of place names within the analysis section of the paper. Best of luck with the research project.
Author Response
Response to Ref 2 :
Comment 1 : Literature review. The content of the articles will be discussed
R Comment 1 :
The literature was reviewed and moved in a separate section. Because of to the large number of bibliographic references, their content was discussed briefly in order to achieve a relative balance between the extension of these sections and the other sections of the article. The authors have intended a structured approach by thematic areas of the discussed references.
The following paragraphs were added:
Dematteis' study [2] focuses on the analysis of the relationships between urban identity, the image of the city and their implications for urban marketing, while Raagmaa [3] and Pike et al. [4] analyse the role of regional identity in regional development and planning. Anssi [5] follows the same epistemological lines, which address the mobilization of regional identity, the premise for the transition from delimited spaces to macro-regions defined by relational complexity. Regional identity is also the subject of analysis for the study of conducted by Semian & Chromý [6] which analyse it in terms of favours / restrictions for regional development processes. Also in the theoretical-methodological sphere is Banini's study [7], which focuses on the analysis of the theoretical framework of local territorial identities.
Petsimeris [9] analyses the ethnic and social division of a global city, having London as a case study; Budapest is analysed in terms of the impact of policies for the commemoration of anti-communist dissent in urban toponymy and places of memory [10], as well as in terms of the relationship between city marketing and urban culture [11].
While the works of Trigg [13] and Bigon [16] move along the lines of purely theoretical coordinates, Crețan & Matthews [14] analyse the population's responses to the change of urban toponymy in a martyred city (Timișoara), and Light & Young [ 15] focus their scientific approach on the policies of continuity / change in urban toponymy.
The studies carried out by historians, linguists and sociologists used as a documentary basis for our research focus on the issue of street names and street nomenclature, turning to case studies of either a city (Bucharest, [18, 21-22, 24-25]), or the old names of streets, as an expression of the degree of culture in the evolution of a locality [19-20, 23].
The contribution of geographers to the study of urban toponymy concerns both the theoretical [26-28] and the practical-applicative component. The second category includes the studies conducted by Light [29-30] on the renaming of streets in Bucharest after 1989, by Light et al. [31-32] on the urban toponymy during the communist period based on the Romanian capital, as well as the studies conducted by Voiculescu [33] regarding the fatalism reflected in the renaming of the streets in Timișoara post-1989, and Boamfă [34], regarding the geographical anthroponymy.
Comment 2 : The purpose of the literature review to ground your research within the larger academic discussion on topic.
R Comment 2 :
We placed the discussion in a broader context, highlighting the political-ideological background of centralized industrialization and urbanization in the former socialist states of Central and Balkan Europe.
In this regard, we have added in the first part of section 4.1. following paragraphs:
- Rising to power with Soviet support after World War II, the communist parties in Central Europe and the Balkans tried to devise radical strategies for modernizing society. The new political-ideological dynamic shaped the society of these spaces between 1945-1989. Its main features can be summarized as follows:
- mimicking the Soviet-Stalinist political model as a paradigm of change, establishing the dictatorship of the communist party, abolishing other parties and the parliamentary system;
- the prioritised development of the socializing processes of the economy and rapid industrialization;
- the marginalization, even the disregard of the conditions for the expression of the individual aspects of man as a social subject and the atrophy of the critical function of thinking;
- the instrumentalization of culture as a means of political-ideological propaganda.
These constants overlapped and interacted in various ways, depending on the circumstances, and shaped the picture of social realities. Their progress was the direct result of political action, the whole society being marked by the domination of the political system. Political life under the hegemony of the Communist Party echoed the characteristics of the Stalinist political system. It was defined by the exercise of the dictatorial power of the communist party, the disappearance of any democratic manifestations within it, the establishment of repression and violence as instruments of supremacy in the party and in society, the abrogation of civil rights and freedoms, the transformation of hypocrisy, denunciation and arbitrariness into governing principles. The Stalinist system transformed the communist party from a political body responsible with the elaboration of strategies for the development and modernization of society, into an administrative institution in charge of executing the decisions made at the very top. It was able to resort to any means necessary, from repression to manipulation, with the sole aim of achieving an economic performance having a positive impact in the social field.
The radical change in the economy was conceived as being linked to a social structure, based on accentuated industrialization and the collectivization of agriculture. Another defining feature of the economy was centralized planning. With its help, the absolute domination of the party/state system over the economy was enacted.
In the long run, the mechanisms for regulating the economy, the single-party economic relations system and state ownership proved to be unsuccessful. The main cause was political, the dominant instrument in the structuring and functioning of economic mechanisms. Instead of the economy regulating itself through specific internal coordinates, it was modelled on voluntary principles, through state intervention.
Comment 3 : I also would suggest you improve your legend on your maps. Move the description of the categories on the map to the legend of the map and not as part of the figure caption.
R Comment 3 :
The legends of the maps have been improved by emphasizing the representative toponyms related to industrialization during the centralized economy. The explanation of the legend has been moved from the footnote in line with to the corresponding conventional signs.
As geographers, the authors consider the cartographic part (i.e. maps) as an useful tool used for revealing and explaining the information provided by the written part. Thus, the industrial areas are the effects of industrialization (especially industrialization during the centralized economy) process and the maps illustrate precisely their spatial relationships with residential areas, as well as the particularities of the geographical location of the two cities selected as study cases.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
The analyzed topic is very interesting and important. I would like to congratulate the authors on an interesting idea and research.
The title is adequate to the research problem being undertaken.
The correct terminology was used. The language of the article is mature, correct, adequate.
The article contains almost the appropriate structure. The article has been divided into relevant sections, and their content coincides with their titles. However, some parts of the paper are very extensive, while others have almost no text (e.g.: introduction). Such large differences in the volume of individual sections suggest the inability to create a good paper structure. The structure of the paper should be improved. Perhaps an additional section devoted to the literature review should be separeted?
The abstract does not offer enough information on the goal of the paper, methods used and main results. It should be completed to provide this information to the reader.
The introduction part needs to be corrected and essentially rewritten. It is definitely underdeveloped.
Keywords are proper.
Footnotes and bibliography are correctly formulated.
The technical part of the article does not raise any objections. The work is aesthetic.
The aim and hypothesis were not described. It is hard to refer to an article when one does not know the purpose and assumed research hypothesis. Please define it clearly. The hypothesis should be also discussed in the end of the article whether it has been proven or not.
In the methodological part I miss some important information. First of all, why were these two chosen from among many cities? Is it by contrast or similarity? In what categories? Why were other cities not analyzed? How do these two cities stand out from the rest that were taken for analysis?
The authors wrote that they analyzed the statistical data. But what was the data, and why were these data chosen? I can't quite see the described work here.
The choice of why the years 2008-2020 was selected for the analysis was not justified either.
Discussion and conclusions part is supported by the results.
Most of the literature items presented in the reference list are current and related to the topic presented. In my opinion, 68 references is a satisfactory number showing the work done by the authors of the paper. I didn't find the wrong and inappropriate references on the list.
Author Response
Response to Ref 3 :
Comment 1 : The introduction part needs to be corrected and essentially rewritten. It is definitely underdeveloped.
R Comment 1 :
The Introduction section was extended by adding three paragraphs which highlight the purpose, the hypothesis, the originality of the scientific debate, and the representativeness of the case studies. The hypothesis is verified at the end of the paper (in the Conclusions section), where the importance of the study is also highlighted.
The purpose of this study is to provide an analysis of how the oversized industrialization of the centralized economy period changed the urban toponymy, thus influencing the memory of places. In this sense, we hypothesize that the dysfunctions registered in terms of urban cultures as a result of the oversized industrialization policy, and in a broad sense, of the cultural policies pursued by the communist authorities could be entirely rolled back, disappearing once the disturbing factors themselves went extinct.
Despite a rich scientific literature devoted to toponymy during the centralized economy era, this issue has been only fleetingly addressed, either in the form of studies related to urban identity and image [2-3], [6], [8], to local development and regional planning [4-5], to urban culture and toponymy [9-10], [14-15], [18-26], [29-33], or in general toponymy works [16], [27-28]. Therefore, the original side to this study results from the deepening of the industrialization - deindustrialization - urban toponymy - memory of places relationship, applied in a representative space, though less studied from this point of view, of the former Communist Bloc: Romania.
As case studies, we have selected two cities that we deemed representative from this point of view: the country's capital, Bucharest, a metropolis with strong industrialized macro-regional functions during the centralized economy era and Galați, which ranks 6th in the national urban hierarchy, the largest steel centre and river and sea port in Romania, a poster-city for oversized development in an industrial field (steel) at odds with the tradition of places and the potential of the urban influence area.
Comment 2 : The structure of the paper should be improved. Perhaps an additional section devoted to the literature review should be separeted?
R Comment 2 :
We created such a section, by detaching from the "Methodology & Research Approach" section those issues related to the research of bibliographic resources and their revision (according to the 2nd reviewer’s suggestions).
Comment 3 :The abstract does not offer enough information on the goal of the paper, methods used and main results. It should be completed to provide this information to the reader.
R Comment 3:
This information was clearly mentioned in the Abstract, by adding the followings:
The paper aims to contribute to the development of research on the impact of oversized industrialization on the memory of places, in the context of the transition from industrial to service-based economies, a process that affected the states of the former Communist Bloc after 1990. Based on bibliographic sources and field research conducted between 2008 and 2020 in two cities in Romania (Bucharest, the country's capital, and Galați, the largest river and sea port and the main centre of the steel industry in the country), we have evaluated quantitatively these changes with the help of indices resulting from the toponymic changes resulting from these processes. The study shows that the functional disturbances due to the oversized industrialization that characterized the communist period only managed to a small extent to affect the correlation between the spatial identity of the two cities and their toponymy.
Comment 4 : The aim and hypothesis were not described. It is hard to refer to an article when one does not know the purpose and assumed research hypothesis. Please define it clearly.
R Comment 4:
The aim and hypothesis of the paper were mentioned in a paragraph added in the second part of the Introduction section.
The purpose of this study is to provide an analysis of how the oversized industrialization of the centralized economy period changed the urban toponymy, thus influencing the memory of places. In this sense, we hypothesize that the dysfunctions registered in terms of urban cultures as a result of the oversized industrialization policy, and in a broad sense, of the cultural policies pursued by the communist authorities could be entirely rolled back, disappearing once the disturbing factors themselves went extinct.
Comment 5 : The hypothesis should be also discussed in the end of the article whether it has been proven or not.
R Comment 5:
In the authors' opinion, the hypothesis has been proven. To clarify this, the following paragraph has been added to the Conclusions section:
The location of large industrial objectives in cities lacking a true industrial tradition has disrupted the relations between cities and their areas of influence leading to artificial developments of the built fund. Subsequently, the disappearance of political-ideological constraints that generated these hypertrophic developments led to a rebalancing of territorial systems through deindustrialization and tertiarization. The disappearance/reconversion of the industrial objectives also had a strong impact on the urban toponymy by replacing the names that reminded people of the communist period in favour of others related to the national specificity and the tradition of the places in question. This demonstrates the hypothesis stated at the beginning of the paper that the dysfunctions registered in urban cultures as a result of the policies pursued by the communist authorities during the centralized economy era are reversible in nature, receding with the disappearance of disturbing factors and having an impact on the memory of places, which tends to fade over time. These are practically a stage in the evolution of the cities of the countries that made up the former Communist Bloc [32, 60].
Comment 6 : In the methodological part I miss some important information. First of all, why were these two chosen from among many cities? Is it by contrast or similarity? In what categories? Why were other cities not analyzed? How do these two cities stand out from the rest that were taken for analysis?
R Comment 6:
We have specified these aspects by adding the paragraph:
The selection of the two cities was made based on their representativeness for two distinct situations (one is a metropolis with complex functions, the other - a large city developed hypertrophically in an industrial branch not based on tradition, supplied by imports stemming from centrally coordinated industrial relations). The two development models are similar to the development trajectories of most former industrialized socialist cities during the centralized economy, but contrast with each other in several ways: demographic size, functional typology and balance between urban functions, the extent of urban / rural relations. Galați was selected alongside the Capital due to its location near the former border with the Soviet Union, a geographical position which played a decisive role in its industrial development.
In addition, the following paragraph was added at the end of the paper:
The two selected case studies complement each other and are meant to provide a more evocative picture of the impact the communist period has had on the urban culture of the localities east of the former Iron Curtain and, in particular, on the urban culture of Romanian cities.
Comment 7: The authors wrote that they analyzed the statistical data. But what was the data, and why were these data chosen? I can't quite see the described work here.
R Comment 7:
These data were highlighted in parentheses
(regarding the dynamic of the urban population and of the employees working in the industry)
Comment 8: The choice of why the years 2008-2020 was selected for the analysis was not justified either.
R Comment 8:
This is highlighted at the beginning of section 2 as follows:
The paper is based on the experience provided by an extensive participatory research process carried out over a period of twelve years (between 2008 and 2020) in the two cities.
To be more explicit, we've added:
This is why that particular period was selected for analysis
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Thank you for addressing my comments on the first draft. I think this draft is a significant improvement over the first draft. I now understand the context of the research and the research is situated well in the academic literature. The maps are much easier to understand. Thank you. Overall, the paper is an interesting addition to the academic literature on place names and political redevelopment, especially in the post-Soviet sphere. I would suggest you proof read the paper one last time, as there are a few sections that are hard to understand. For example, line 146 is awkward and seems out of place. I'm not sure you need to include the final sentence of that paragraph. If you review some of the grammar and usage concerns, I think you have a very interesting paper. Thank you for sharing your research.
Author Response
Answers for Reviewer 2 :
For ,,Line 146,, :
Revised variant 1 : This is why that particular period was selected for analysis.
Revised variant 2 : This is the reason why this moment was selected for the current analysis.
The quality of the English language was assured by a professional translator. We provide an official document issued by the Institute of Geography, Romanian Academy which sustain this fact (i.e. Professional_translation_proof)
