More from Less? Environmental Rebound Effects of City Size

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper is good, there are some comments to improve the paper:

- The statistical analysis of the data should be provided in the paper. 

- The first section must be the introduction.

- The first section is too long without any useful information, authors need to revise this section by highlighting the novelty and contribution of the paper.

- The research objectives must clearly provide in the introduction section.

- Keywords section must be extended.

- The abstract is not useful, authors need to extend this section by highlighting the results and the implications.

- Several keywords are not defined well, for example, GDP, etc.

- The discussion and implications to theory and policy must be added as a new section.

- Sensitivity analysis must be provided.

- The results should compare with other existing methods.

- Conclusion must be updated by highlighting the limitations and recommendations for further works. 

- The information about data and datasets are not presented well, authors need to clear this issue in the paper. 

- The references must be updated. 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper is focused on the purposefulness of the Brand’s Law in relation to the big cities. Manuscript seems to be well-prepared. The research topic presented by Authors fits well into the scope of the Journal. The paper may be considered for publication but some improvements are suggested – all of them are indicated in more detail below:

• First part of the paper, i.e. from line 14 to line 106, should be named as “Introduction” and bulleted as 1.
• Term „social synergy” (line 34) should be briefly characterized by Authors.
• Scaling theory presented in section 1.1. of the paper has not been sufficiently explained. Why are there such differences between the mentioned exponents? This should be explained in more detail. In general, the approaches related to the scaling in subsections 1.1.-1.4. need to be explained more widely.
• From the editorial viewpoint, the citation methodology applied by Authors should be consistent. The proper one is the use of square brackets and not the surname and the year – as it has been cited e.g. in line 511 (Pang et al., 2020) or line 521 (Binder et al., 2001). This should be unified.
• Section „Conclusion” should be divided into two smaller ones, i.e. Discussion (section 3.) where Authors will present the discussion over the results obtained and Conclusions (section 4.) where Authors will present briefly the highlights and the perspectives of the work.
• Section References should be prepared according to the requirements of the Journal (i.e. abbreviated journal names instead of their whole names).

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

 

This paper discussed the “Environmental Rebound Effects of City Size” (BRANDs Law). In the article, common theses on the development and description of urban and rural effects are described and examined using mathematical models (toy model). The naive scaling model contradicts BRAND’s Law or the belief that bigger cities are greener. The model indicates a backfire rebound effect from city size/density.

 

REMARKS

Line 7, 9, 14 , 54, 66 …: Scientific articles are usually formulated in a person-neutral manner. instead of “we suggest…” should be  “the authors suggest…” selected. Line 9: “This paper proposed…” instead of “we propose…” etc.

Line 205, 207, 210 …: Carbon dioxide should be expressed in the correct formula with an index 2.

Line 385: The line break should be inserted here to visually support the context.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf