Young Pioneers, Vitality, and Commercial Gentrification in Mudan Street, Changchun, China

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper presents an interesting small-scale case study in commercial ‘gentrification’ over an 8-year period. It is a useful addition to the literature, although itself not of massive impact.

In general this is well and fluently written; however it would benefit from a careful proof reading and sense check of English usage (eg “sweat capita” line 51)

The literature review is surprisingly limited.

There are a number of cases of assertions made with little or no actual evidence (eg discussion of low rents).

The interview quotations do helpfully enliven the text; however they could perhaps be better integrated: at present they seem to sit rather separately, almost as if each group of quotations is an illustration.

Detail points:

There seems to be an assumption that all gentrification is started by “young pioneers” (wording in Abstract, line 1).

Most of the Abstract focuses on the paper’s conclusions. But is this all new knowledge? What makes this distinct from other work?

lines 37-40 Gentrification as developed in Western political/economic systems may be inappropriate in other contexts for reasons beyond “spatial and temporal paths of development”. Politics and economics, for example.

45 what is a “depressed” space?

59 what other issues are “more serious”?

91 students as gentrifiers: there is a large literature on “studentification” and, while it often involves displacement of existing populations, it’s difficult and often misleading to term this “gentrification”. Students are usually relatively low income/wealth. “pillar stone” is an odd expression. They are not all “hipsters” (94)!

153+ origin of data on shop numbers/types? Is this what is covered in line 178+?

161+ likewise, evidence for youth of consumers and operators?

172 so is this the rationale for the choice of this district: that it is typical? This should be elaborated and come slightly earlier (cf line 143). What was this area like before gentrification? Was 2012 the onset of change (ie why did the research begin then)? How large is this phenomenon (eg how many buildings transformed as percentage of district – and in what timeframe)?

209 one observation does not “prove”. It may “demonstrate”, or “provide evidence for”.

217 evidence that these early owners beautified their own buildings?

226 in what sense, and to whom, did they become “heroes”?

Are the interviews translated for this paper? If so, “vanward” (line 228) is not a word – “in the forefront” might be better English.

234+ no real evidence for levels of rent here (or in comparison with other districts). In line 349 a rent increase figure is given, but readers have nothing with which to compare it: what was happening elsewhere in the city at this period? What was the inflation rate?

288 what is an “English corner”? (Other phrases may need explanation for international readers: crosstalk; Beijing’s 798; shop plaque)

373 source for municipal government’s description of the area?

395+ do we know precisely why this street renovation project was launched, and why the particular inflexible approach was taken?

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Paper deals gentrification in China. Paper is focused on study the core participants, who were avant-garde café owners, in the in initial stage of the commercial gentrification of Mudan Street in Changchun, China
The paper has appropriate length. The work presented in this article is interesting. The topic is an important area to investigate. The topic of the study is well in the focus of the journal. The paper is self-contained and good structured in few sections.

Some suggestions:
- The list of references contains lack of the newest references.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper proposes a study of the commercial gentrification in a central area of a Chinese city (Changchun). The method is based on several interviews from 2012 to 2017.

The topic is very interesting and the matters analyzed in the subsections 4 are stimulating and original.

Nevertheless there isn’t any clear explication of the method. what is the interview questionnaire? Is it structured? It is not clear what data is collected and available for this study.

The data in the tables 1 and 2 (gender, age and job) are too few for such an analysis.

The commentaries of the interviewed people are attention-grabbing (lines 228-233, or 235-258, and so on) but need to be put into a more general frame.

As, in my opinion, this work is thought-provoking, I suggest and encourage the authors to review all the data collected and represent them from some fundamental point of views in order to improve the efficacy of the study. The data should be also synthetized by using some statistics.

An overall major revision of the method is necessary.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

The review made by the authors in lines 192-199 is modest. As I said in the first review, the method is still not clearly exposed; the data collected is not adequately processed. I suggest:

- As the interviews are semistructured, the authors should make, at least, a table in which all the general and particular categories of the information collected are presented and possibly also add a figure with the interview form. In particular, the information on the type of financing is certainly interesting given that the paper analyses commercial activities.

- To make a summary table in which values and percentages of the answers are reported for each category of data (possibly clustering them into categories or ranges of values e.g. for ages 20-25; 26-30;> 30 ).

- Authors should try to group also the open answers given by the interviewees (e.g. reason of locating, perspective of the future, etc.) into general categories and provide the corresponding statistics. Some comments can be cited, as in lines 241-246, but in order to represent the complexity of the case-study, these sentences must be referred to a general framework, which should express the key to understanding the case study proposed by the authors.

Author Response

We thank the reviewer very much for the detailed constructive suggestions. Accordingly, we revised the manuscript carefully, by reviewing all the textual data obtained from the interviews and clustering the different responses into categories. We list the categories and corresponding statistics in Table 3 to generally exhibit the features of interviewees and their business situations. Table3 provides clear and valid arguments for the discussions in the next sections of the manuscript. We also modified some statements and highlighted in the manuscript. We hope that the revised manuscript will be judged appropriate for publication in Sustainability.

Round 3

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors made some of the suggested revisions. The features of the interviewees are shown in Table 3, although there are no percentage values, as required in the previous review.

Author Response

We thank the referee very much for the suggestions. Accordingly, we have added the columns of percentage values to Table 3.