Submit to this Journal Review for this Journal Propose a Special Issue

Article Menu

Share Help Cite Discuss in SciProfiles

Open AccessArticle

Peer-Review Record

Identifying Communities within the Smart-Cultural City of Singapore: A Network Analysis Approach

Smart Cities 2019, 2(1), 66-81; https://doi.org/10.3390/smartcities2010005

by Aurel von Richthofen^*

, Ludovica Tomarchio and Alberto Costa

Reviewer 1:

André Guedes

Reviewer 2: Anonymous

Smart Cities 2019, 2(1), 66-81; https://doi.org/10.3390/smartcities2010005

Submission received: 6 December 2018 / Revised: 21 February 2019 / Accepted: 22 February 2019 / Published: 1 March 2019

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Point 1. Too many keywords with no focus (maximum 5);

Point 2 - "Technology Definition: The concept of Intelligent Cities emerged around the year 2005." (Line 43)

Question 2: Clarify which literature corroborates this understanding. A definition of the concept of Intelligent Cities goes back earlier with the digital city, e-government (note, for example, United Nations Electronic Government Research parameters 2018 - United Nations), and sustainable cities. To deepen a literature search if possible in a systematic way (PRISMA).

Point 3 - "The emergence of Smart Cities also coincided with the advent of 'smart phones', as the iPhone introduced in 2007, devices that radically expanded the possibilities of mobile phones and connect people and devices to the Internet, at least conceptually. (Lines 55 to 58)

Question 3: What literature answers this statement? The articles of recent in the concept and recent in the concept.

Point 4 - "Singapore is well-positioned to be a smart city and has implemented many aspects of smart city technology and governance." (Lines 109-110)

Question 4: Where in literature has the city been referred to as an intelligent city? Are there other articles that corroborate this view?

Point 5 - "... Richard Florida ..." (Line 135)

Question 5: Who is Richard Florida and is it an intelligent scientific organization of the same for Smart Cities?

Point 6 - "In the case of the city-state of Singapore, they can be mobilized to the level of nation building." (Lines 147-148)

Question 6: How to differentiate the view of the city from the concept of the State to the concept of Nation? What is the difference between the concept of State and the concept of Government?

Point 7 - "Assuming that contemporary governance arrangements inhabit innovative initiatives, new modes of governance must have a double creativity both in terms of their potential to stimulate creativity in social and economic dynamics and to creatively transform their own capabilities.” (Lines 152-155)

Question 7: What theoretical structure supports this statement? Make quotations.

Point 8 - The literature reference is outdated and with few reference articles for the Smart Cities (general introduction).

Question 8: Update the referential for the concepts of the last five years, preferably with articles that have DOI. The referential must be substantially improved, including the city's creative sciences, circular economy, industry 4.0 and smart cities.

Point 9 - "What makes Singapore a creative city?" (Line 180)

Issue 9: Create a table with information from smart cities as well as the main stories in the literature for Singapore.

Point 10 - "Both want to consider the quality of life of people, or more specifically cities, 'urban quality', 'open governance processes' and 'cultural participation and life' as the ultimate objective of their actions urban". (Lines 210-213)

Question 10: This point needs to be more connected with scientific researchers and needs to be reviewed.

Point 11 - "2.1 Attribute Definition" (Line 225)

Issue 11: Define the search method better before defining the agents. Download the used analysis software as well as justifications for choosing it

Point 12 - "Authorities, Academy, Industry and Artist" (Lines 230-233)

Question 12: How can social network analysis software (SNA) help identify those who consume and produce a smart city? Is there a theoretical event where the actors can be supported as a Triple, Quadruple or Penta Helix?

Point 13 - The actors are evaluated according to their contribution to different fields divided into "Action", "Objectives" and "Methods". (Lines 241-242)

Question 13: Define how you came to this saga and what the criteria for a title are in a detailed way.

Point 14 - Big Data, Social Media, AI, Blockchain, Modeling, Simulation, IoT, Technology, Robotics, Automation. (Lines 247-248)

Question 14: How can we ensure that there are no other technological terms linked to Smart Cities and Creative Cities? These terms are generic and are part of a wide range of other technical terms.

Point 15 - "Those groups are usually called clusters, or communities." (Lines 268-269)

Question 15: Have the clusters been extracted from the statistical analysis of the participants or from any theoretical model that pre-conceived the model?

Point 16 - "MILP" and "CPLEX" (Line 287)

Question 16: Detail for the study in question what was the role of the MILP and CPLEX for the analysis performed and the reasons for choosing the methods. The language in the article should be scientific, but at the same time, the article should be understood by a layman who is reading the text.

Point 17 - Thirty actors from four professional groups or sectors have been evaluated for eleven domains of expertise. (Lines 296-297)

Question 17: Can such a small sample be considered valid for the analyzed statistic? Justify scientifically and prove validity. There is no possibility of generalization of results.

Point 18 - "Clusters of Selected Smart-Cultural Cities Discourse Actors and Domains" (Line 331)

Question 18: Identify the reliability of the research instrument and how the selection process of the target audience for cluster composition occurred. Clarify how the domains of knowledge were extracted to cross the data and identify the columns of figure 1.

General points

- The quantity and quality of references needs to be improved to give more theoretical and scientific background to the study.

- The text is confusing, please refer to recent MDPI (Sustainability, Data and Cities) articles to check the format used by journals.

- Was the problem really presented for the paper?

- The paper can be improved through a table containing the main institutes with parameters of analysis of smart and creative cities and where these parameters and indicators are available (web site). Example: Urban Indicators, Performance, Measurements and Standards

- The paper needs to explain how the study was conducted, how many participants answered the questionnaire, based on which methodology the questionnaire was prepared, how the results of the questionnaire were evaluated and what kind of statistical analysis was performed on the questionnaire.

- From the statistical point of view, the number of participants is too small to generalize the universal method of city analysis. One of the limitations of the case study (single or multiple) is precisely the small possibility of generalization of the results.

- Which theory supports the constructs?

- The paper needs to be completely reformulated to fit the introduction, with the problem-question, the objectives, an appropriate methodology and finally the analysis of the results.

Author Response

Reviewer 1:

Point 1. Too many keywords with no focus (maximum 5);

Action taken: New Keywords: Smart-Cultural City; Actor Network; Bipartite Graph

Point 2 - "Technology Definition: The concept of Intelligent Cities emerged around the year 2005." (Line 43)

Action taken: The literature review was reviewed systematically and reworked to include recent and more relevant works. We reviewed and considered the PRISMA reporting method but decided against using it at this stage. Our article is not about evaluating randomized trials or the evaluations of interventions.

This particular point with regards to "Technology Definition: The concept of Intelligent Cities emerged around the year 2005." (Line 43) refers to the SET-PLAN. We explained how cybernetic thinking paved the ground for the initial concepts of smart cities. We added a reference smart infrastructure, too. We also added a reference to the linkage of e-government and ‘Intelligent Cities’ by Mechant (2018) under the ‘Broad Definition’.

Question 3: What literature answers this statement? The articles of recent in the concept and recent in the concept.

Action taken: The sentence was deleted as it does not further support the text.

Point 4 - "Singapore is well-positioned to be a smart city and has implemented many aspects of smart city technology and governance." (Lines 109-110)

Question 4: Where in literature has the city been referred to as an intelligent city? Are there other articles that corroborate this view?

Action taken: We added the reference needed.

Point 5 - "... Richard Florida ..." (Line 135)

Question 5: Who is Richard Florida and is it an intelligent scientific organization of the same for Smart Cities?

Action taken: Richard Florida is a researcher that positions the idea of the ‘creative class’ that transforms cities undergoing the transition into a post-industrial economy. Reference and explanation added in the text.

Point 6 - "In the case of the city-state of Singapore, they can be mobilized to the level of nation building." (Lines 147-148)

Question 6: How to differentiate the view of the city from the concept of the State to the concept of Nation? What is the difference between the concept of State and the concept of Government?

Action taken: Reference and quote added in the text.

Question 7: What theoretical structure supports this statement? Make quotations.

Action taken: Reference added in the text.

Point 8 - The literature reference is outdated and with few reference articles for the Smart Cities (general introduction).

Action taken: Additional literature was considered and included. Additionally, we refer to existing reviews of literature in the introduction. The authors highlight the Singapore case specific literature in particular.

Point 9 - "What makes Singapore a creative city?" (Line 180)

Issue 9: Create a table with information from smart cities as well as the main stories in the literature for Singapore.

Action taken: See ‘Table 1.Singapore as a Creative City, State and Nation’ inserted with references.

Question 10: This point needs to be more connected with scientific researchers and needs to be reviewed.

Action taken: The authors clarify in the text that this is juxtaposition and comparison is their own thesis.

Point 11 - "2.1 Attribute Definition" (Line 225)

Issue 11: Define the search method better before defining the agents. Download the used analysis software as well as justifications for choosing it

Action taken: See reply to reviewer 2 “Methodology” and text added after line 263. See also reply to Point 12 below.

Point 12 - "Authorities, Academy, Industry and Artist" (Lines 230-233)

Action taken: See reply to reviewer 2 “Methodology” and text added after line 263. The contribution of the authors is that they transform the domain of the problem into a network and analyse the network using a clustering optimization algorithm.

Point 13 - The actors are evaluated according to their contribution to different fields divided into "Action", "Objectives" and "Methods". (Lines 241-242)

Question 13: Define how you came to this saga and what the criteria for a title are in a detailed way.

Action taken: Point 13 and 14 have been addressed by rewriting the paragraph starting with line 273.

Point 14 - Big Data, Social Media, AI, Blockchain, Modeling, Simulation, IoT, Technology, Robotics, Automation. (Lines 247-248)

Question 14: How can we ensure that there are no other technological terms linked to Smart Cities and Creative Cities? These terms are generic and are part of a wide range of other technical terms.

Action taken: see point 13.

Point 15 - "Those groups are usually called clusters, or communities." (Lines 268-269)

Question 15: Have the clusters been extracted from the statistical analysis of the participants or from any theoretical model that pre-conceived the model?

Action taken: The authors clarify in the text that the clusters are the results of solving the optimization problem. More precisely, after the resolution, we get the values of the variables x, which tell us the cluster each node of the network belongs to.

Point 16 - "MILP" and "CPLEX" (Line 287)

Action taken: The authors clarify in the text that the MILP is an acronym used in optimization to describe problems like ours, where there are integer variables and linear constraints / objective function. CPLEX is the state-of-the-art software that can be used to solve MILP problems.

Point 17 - Thirty actors from four professional groups or sectors have been evaluated for eleven domains of expertise. (Lines 296-297)

Question 17: Can such a small sample be considered valid for the analyzed statistic? Justify scientifically and prove validity. There is no possibility of generalization of results.

Action taken: The authors clarify in the text that the sample size is small. At the same time, the methodology is based on solving a deterministic optimization problem rather than computing a statistic which needs a large sample size to be significant. As a matter of fact, communities can be identified even when a network size is small (for example, a complete graph where each node is connected to the others is usually identified as a cluster by various community detection methodologies, regardless of the dimension).

That being said, the suggestion to test the methodology with larger samples for better generalization is indeed useful and we plan to do it in future work.

Point 18 - "Clusters of Selected Smart-Cultural Cities Discourse Actors and Domains" (Line 331)

Action taken: The reliability of the optimisation algorithm is laid out more clearly in the methods part. Paragraph added after line 272 now clearly states the origin of the database.

General points

- The quantity and quality of references needs to be improved to give more theoretical and scientific background to the study.

Action taken: The literature review has been reworked systematically.

- The text is confusing, please refer to recent MDPI (Sustainability, Data and Cities) articles to check the format used by journals.

Action taken: The text has been restructured.

- Was the problem really presented for the paper?

Action taken: The abstract and revised introduction now clearly state the problem.

Action taken: The authors clarify in the text how the research was conducted without a questionnaire and why. It is further presented that the article uses a method based on solving a deterministic optimization problem rather than computing a statistic which needs a large sample size to be significant.

Action taken: The authors believe to have addressed the point above.

- Which theory supports the constructs?

Action taken: The literature presented should suffice to support both the method and the interpretation of the results.

- The paper needs to be completely reformulated to fit the introduction, with the problem-question, the objectives, an appropriate methodology and finally the analysis of the results.

Action taken: See actions taken.

Reviewer 2 Report

The article reflects a timely discussion of Smart and Creative cities, using Singapore as a case-study. It proposes to use methodology of bipartite graphs to investigate the formation of Smart-Cultural Cities, and analyses clusters that came out of the study using this methodology. Overall, great effort - very timely discussion and interesting avenue was taken for this research. Some are suggested for consideration in line with comments below.

Structure of the paper:

Great to see clearly spelled out questions for the paper in the introduction. Introduction could benefit from including signposting to help reader follow the paper.

Subsections 1.2 & 1.3 seem to be out of place between definitions of smart and creative cities. Since it is focused on Singapore it might be a better fit to have a sub-section on Singapore specifically following discussion of smart and creative cities that would include these two subsections along with the Singapore as a creative city that came later.

Methodology:

What is missing is why you decided to go with this particular methodology and what are the benefits of using it. In Line 267 you state ‘employ network analysis techniques’ - but what are those techniques is not really explained.

Attribute Definition subsection does not actually spell out what attributes are. The subsection can benefit from a better explanation of actors and domains. Are domains and attributes inter-changeable? If so, needs to be clarified, or standardize the use of one or the other term throughout the paper. Otherwise, it’s confusing especially for someone who is not familiar with the methodology.

Better explanation should also be provided as to who actors were selected and how attributes were assigned. What was the data? over what period of time? Data collection process should be clearly explained.

Finally, how did you arrive at conclusions in the discussion section based on this methodology? Especially cluster interrelations section and figure needs to be fleshed out. The authors articulate the questions very well in the introduction, however these are lost at the discussion section. I’d recommend reviewing the questions and link discussion closer to the actual questions stated in the beginning.

References are needed:

Lines 43-47

Lines 123-128

Lines 135-138

Lines 203-213 (names a white paper but not an appropriate reference in square brackets)

Minor edits:

Line 95: should it be ‘applied TO various urban scales’?

Lines 110-113 - do they need to be in Italic? Suggest start a new para from Singapore and not in Italic

Line 144: should it be ‘as it IS able to’?

Line 187: Housing should be capitalized in ‘the Art housing Scheme’

Line 254: dot at the end of the sentence

Line 299 see table below - specify number of the table — Table 1

Figure 2: Embed - delete an extra d at the end.

Do the yellow lines form Digital Cultural Transformers need to be arrows? It’s not clear. Also unsure what it means ‘according to their connections and weights’. Where does this come into play? how is it reflected? is this why the arrows are different size? Needs to be better explained.

Line 350: perhaps ‘ Urban Scenario Makers look AT all aspects’?

Line 381: delete ‘,’ before ‘a’ (‘,a’)

Author Response

Reviewer 2:

Structure of the paper:

Great to see clearly spelled out questions for the paper in the introduction. Introduction could benefit from including signposting to help reader follow the paper.

Action taken: Signpost paragraph added.

Action taken: The section 1.2 was deleted and the addition of the table under the Singapore Creative City in 1.6 allows the reader to draw the parallels between smart and creative cities.

Methodology:

Action taken: We would like to thank the reviewer for pointing this out and have incorporated the points in the text. The advantages of this methodology can be summarized as follows:

1. Unlike other clustering methodologies, the number of clusters is not required as input. Rather, it is found automatically when solving the problem.

2. The problem can be solved exactly. Many other popular clustering problems are often solved heuristically (e.g., K-means).

3. This methodology allows better visualization and interpretation of the results. As a matter of fact, regardless of the number of actors and domains, visualization is always possible, while methods like K-means allows for visualization only up to dimension 3. Other methods that reduce dimension, e.g., PCA, may allow visualization but due to the change of domain, the interpretation could prove to be difficult.

Action taken: We removed the ‘attribute’ terminology, thank you!

Action taken: The database and selections has been described in the text now.

Action taken: Added interpretation with reference to the final diagram and by returning to the research questions in the text.

References are needed:

Lines 43-47

Lines 123-128

Lines 135-138

Lines 203-213 (names a white paper but not an appropriate reference in square brackets)

Action taken: References added to these sections.

Minor edits:

Line 95: should it be ‘applied TO various urban scales’?

Lines 110-113 - do they need to be in Italic? Suggest start a new para from Singapore and not in Italic

Line 144: should it be ‘as it IS able to’?

Line 187: Housing should be capitalized in ‘the Art housing Scheme’

Line 254: dot at the end of the sentence

Line 299 see table below - specify number of the table — Table 1

Figure 2: Embed - delete an extra d at the end.

Line 350: perhaps ‘Urban Scenario Makers look AT all aspects’?

Line 381: delete ‘,’ before ‘a’ (‘,a’)

Action taken: Minor edits incorporated into document, thank you!

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

- The article proposes an evolution of smart cities. This subject is interesting. In relation to the big challenges, the approach adopted was quite adjusted but there is still a lack of improvement in the literature review of smart cities and their drivers. The attempt to propose a link between intelligent cities and creative cities also evolved with the adaptations made by the authors.

- In the "Singapore as a Creative City, State and Nation" table the "Scientific Concept" column needs to bring at least five authors who corroborate with each objective (determined on the line). As for the citation of the years, they are not necessary, since they will be part of the Reference at the end of the paper.

- The article had a substantial improvement in its content and presentation form.

- Despite the improvements, the theoretical framework needs to be expanded, an approximate number of 80 updated citations (from the last five years and with DOI) is ideal. There are currently 57 citations. Especially about Smart Cities drivers.

Author Response

Does the introduction provide sufficient background and include all relevant references? Can be improved

Action: Literature review expanded again

Is the research design appropriate?Can be improved

Action: Added an explanation of the research design in the introduction

- The article proposes an evolution of smart cities. This subject is interesting. In relation to the big challenges, the approach adopted was quite adjusted but there is still a lack of improvement in the literature review of smart cities and their drivers. The attempt to propose a link between intelligent cities and creative cities also evolved with the adaptations made by the authors.

Action: Literature review expanded again

Action: Table expanded with more references

- The article had a substantial improvement in its content and presentation form.

Thank you, no further action required

Action: Literature review expanded again and now contains over 80 citations

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Article Menu

Identifying Communities within the Smart-Cultural City of Singapore: A Network Analysis Approach

Further Information

Guidelines

MDPI Initiatives

Follow MDPI