A Multiobjective Land Use Design Framework with Geo-Big Data for Station-Level Transit-Oriented Development Planning

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The following things make a good impression on me in the newspaper:
 - in-depth study of the relevant works on the topic
 - the practical orientation of the development and the demonstrated results.

It will benefit research if you add map of tested area.

Make technical corrections of the research (you have text, probably from the pictures that is not conected to picture - line 489)

Give more detailed description of the used methodology with elaboration how different datasets were used in the model.

 

Author Response

We appreciate the reviewer’s suggestion. All the comments were considered and appropriate corrections have been made. Below, there are our answers for specific comments.

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Overall Comments

This article proposes a new method that improves multiobjective TOD land use design and optimizes the land-use layout surrounding MRT stations. The work is very interesting and relevant. However, some work is still necessary to make the article proper for publication.

Specific Comments

 

1.     Figure 1 should be moved to section 3 since it depicts the solution proposed by the authors. However, if it is important to describe the problem approached in the article, it can remain in section 1 but it is necessary to describe it more deeply;

2.     On page 4 the sentence “The goal of this work is to optimize the undeveloped cells will be optimize with the land use design based on the objectives relevant to TOD” does not make sense;

3.     Why did the authors choose specifically the XGBoost method? Apparently, there are other available tree methods. Have the authors considered using another method during the development of their work?

4.     On page 8, figure 1 must be figure 3 and figure 2 must be figure 4;

5.     On page 8, the authors stated that six fitness values are calculated, but the following set used for describing these values has only five elements;

6.     On page 13, there are (a) and (b) missing along with the text;

7.     It is necessary to describe better the figures and tables contained in the article. Most of the figures and tables are just cited along with the text, without a further discussion about their content. Hence, it is difficult to understand some key points of the article.

 

 

 

Author Response

We appreciate the reviewer’s suggestion. All the comments were considered and appropriate corrections have been made. Below, there are our answers for specific comments.

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper employs a method incorporating a multiobjective TOD land use design framework for the optimization of the land use layout in station catchments. It uses the city of Shanghai in China as a case study, a complex and very interesting megacity. In general, I should mention that Transit Oriented Development is one of the most compelling topics found in the literature discussing integrated urban and transport approaches. Noteworthy, the authors adopted a novel approach and attempted to utilize robust optimization to formalize the transformation of an area neighboring a public transport station into a real TOD place. In this context, this paper could contribute significantly to the ongoing scientific debate.

At large, the work is well-articulated and presents an understandable structure. More specifically, the introduction section is very clear depicting the objectives and the research gap that this paper aspires to fill. Furthermore, the methodology section is also nicely structured, providing every proper detail about this research. Additionally, the figures displayed seem to be readable and simple, thus, improving the quality of the paper.

However, I would like to raise some points that will help the authors improve their manuscript:

Firstly, how did you determine the seven types of land uses (lines 154-155)? Please, cite any relevant scientific work, and what do you mean by economic land uses? What is the difference between economic and commercial? It would be helpful to add a sentence with simple examples about each one of these land uses.

Similarly, how did you end up with these six objectives? Please specify. Moreover, I wonder if the term “living conflict” is the proper one, describing this certain objective. Maybe, you could remain this objective into “Land use conflicts” or “Conflict conditions”. Consider this change.

Moving to the fourth section now, I would like to state the following:

a)     How did you determine the size of the planned area and each cell? Is there any relevant literature? (Lines 371-372).

b)     Please add a scalebar in your map, and if possible, a supplementary map, illustrating the position of this metro station in the entire metro network

c)      Which are the local political strategies that you refer to in line 500. It would be beneficial to add a related reference.  

Concluding, I strongly believe that you should enrich your manuscript with a solid discussion section, contrasting your results with similar literature. I hereby suggest two choices: a) you may expand the conclusion section and transform it into discussion and conclusion section or b) introduce one separate section titled “discussion”, where you can add several things from the results and analysis section. The value of this section is extremely important for the coherence of your work. Finally, the conclusion section is fine; it is very useful that you mention the limitations and future research insights. You might also consider adding some few comments about policy suggestions. One last question, do you think that your methodological framework could be replicated to other cities that do not belong in the Chinese concept?

P.S. you may check the whole manuscript again, with the aim to fix some minor grammar and syntactic mistakes that exist or even a very few gross errors (like lines 489-490, a and b indicators).

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

We appreciate the reviewer’s suggestion. All the comments were considered and appropriate corrections have been made. Below, there are our answers for specific comments.

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 4 Report

 

Dear Author(s), I would like to thank you for the opportunity to read your manuscript entitled “A multiobjective land use design framework with geo-big data for the station-level transit-oriented development planning”.

The overall manuscript is well presented with minor spelling or grammar mistakes.

The overall work is very interesting, as the planning model that allows for optimization of the land use is very relevant and necessary especially in high density Chinese megacities.  

Here are some issues concerning your paper:

1.      The overall purpose of the article is stated clearly in the introduction and underlined in the abstract.

2.      The Literature Review part is logical and well organized.

3.      There is no Figure 6a in the manuscript (line 429) and Figure 6b (line490).

4.      According to the chart in Figure 5: what is on the unit of Average Distance OY axis?

5.      What are the names of the other axis in Figure 7?

6.      Future research directions and the significance of the results of the research achieved should be underlined and explained in conclusion part.

Reviewer

Author Response

We appreciate the reviewer’s suggestion. All the comments were considered and appropriate corrections have been made. Below, there are our answers for specific comments.

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx