Bohemian Cultural Scenes and Creative Development of Chinese Cities: An Analysis of 65 Cities Using Cultural Amenity Data

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

1) After fully reading your paper, I recommend the following title for your article:

Bohemian Cultural Scenes and Creative Development of Chinese Cities: An Analysis of 65 Cities Using Cultural Amenity Data

2) In line 16, you should put the full name of OLS because readers may not know what is OLS. The modifying sentence could be ‘Based on amenities data from 65 major Chinese cities, this paper investigates the relationship between bohemian cultural scenes and creative development of Chinese cities as well as regional differences using Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) and truncated regression, and provides conceptual and quantitative support for a bohemian cultural scenes policy.’

3) Line 27, what is 219?

4) Look at your connecting sentences ‘China experienced exponential growth in urban development in the past few decades, as its urbanization rate increased from 17.9% in 1978 to 60.6% in 2019. As the key driver of urban development gradually shifts from industrial production to creativity and innovation [1-4], China’s urban policy is facing new challenges. Especially in East Asia, urban innovation is stimulated by local competition led by the government [5], which is not only related to the creativity of local industries and talents but also closely related to the government's development strategy and cultural planning [6]. For major Chinese cities, household registration policies have played a key role in attracting creative talents; on the other hand, the government has employed policies to support small businesses through public services and credit guarantees, which enhances local creative development.’ While discussing issues in China, you jumped to East Asia. What does it mean? Is it because of sentence connecter or misstated?

5) Also, in line 39, you mentioned “household registration policies have played a key role in attracting creative talents” Is it true? It is interesting to me. Can you provide any reference for this argument?

6) Line 51, please consider using the term “metropolises” instead of “big cities”? Also in line 85.

7) In lines 225-229, I suggest using a table to list down the 27 Bohemian cultural amenities: board games, escape from the locked room, bars, performances, party houses, cafes, video game halls, cinemas, graffiti, rock climbing, DIY workshops, tattoo parlors, recording studios, theatres, KTVs, bookstores, custom-tailored clothes, combative sports gyms, custom furniture, galleries, hair salons, photo studios, manicure and eyelash salons, internet cafes, medical cosmetology, exhibition hall, and floriculture.

8) In line 234, denote the acronym: Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) Measure of Sampling Adequacy.

9) In line 244, look at the formula: the first line is F PC1 & F PC2, but the second line is f PC1 & f PC2.

10) Also in line 244, I suggest demonstrating the formula before replacing it with the value (in number) that would be easier for readers to understand.

11) Section 4. Results and Analysis; you mean Data Analysis OR Results and Discussion? Based on what you have presented, I think “Results” is enough.

12) In Table 1, there is no “**”, maybe the value of Northern Cities for Charisma Dimension and Creative Development (0.353).

13) The title for section 5 should be ‘Discussion and Conclusions’

In general, I can see how you have tried to explain your methods, data analysis, and result presentation, but still complicated due to the lack of diagrams and limited tables explaining the discussed cities. I suggest further specifying diagrams and/or splitting/adding more tables.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Reviewed manuscript focus on 'cultural turn' as a driver of creative development of Chinese cities. Therefore it represents a common approach to urban studies exploring the interaction between tolerance and inclusiveness, creativity and economic development and broader - the quality of life. The manuscript's main strength is the empirical part investigating the bohemian scene as a factor of creativity in major Chinese cities. Due to the Chinese urbanisation scale, the question is intriguing not only for domestic readers.

However, I have four, in my opinion, important doubts:

1) The hypothesis (line 175-176) seems obvious to subject literature. I would wait for a bit more sophisticated approach.

2) The authors should update the literature review. Since the seminal work of Florida and Glaeser, the state of the art progress has been made. 

3) Sample city selection: I suggested using GDP per capita as a level of development measure instead of total GDP unless the population number is a not efficient proxy of the city economic scale - I'm not familiar in details with the structure of the Chinese urban system. 

4) The outcomes suggest some regional or spatial irregularities in investigating issues. Therefore, I'm afraid that the OLS model is incorrect due to possible spatial autocorrelation. I suggest verifying this question. The method based on the maximum likelihood (ML) principle may prove necessary to use.  The other way is to replace several OLS 'regional' models with a geographically weighted regression (GWR) model. It seems to be more consistent and up-to-date. 

Finally, I'm not sure that the manuscript topic is suitable for the journal scope. I can't find clear links to the sustainability concept. However, let it to the editor's decision. 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear authors,

Thank you for your interesting and nice efforts. Overall, I think that your manuscript merits publication, please find some comments and suggestions to improve:

• Line 27: what does this (219) mean?
• Keywords: it is strongly suggested to re-organize them in alphabetical order
• Line 38: which are these 'major cities' in China? 
• Line 49: please add a comma before 'such'
• Line 51: please avoid generalities such as 'some', 'many', etc. without providing concrete examples. Instead, you can give one or two references/citations of some scholars
• Line 60: please add a comma before 'such'
• Line 86: see previous comment (avoid 'many') and concretize your statements with some citations
• To end up your introduction, it is suggested to include a 'guide' for your readers/reviewers of your manuscript by explaining your work plan (i.e. the paper is structured accordingly: section 1 explains... etc.)
• Line 98: 'The cultural scenes policy approach drives urban creative development': how does this happen? 
• Line 112/113: 'the “city as a cultural scene” is considered one of the three main approaches of local cultural policy' - by whom?
• Line 138: it is strongly suggested to avoid beginning your sentences with the expression 'for example' but to try to integrate it in the previous idea and sentence
• Line 142: bohemia gives rise to a new culture and lifestyle that integrates - you are talking abou the culture and the lifestyle, thus they 'integrate' and not 'integrates' (grammar)
• Line 155: please add a comma before 'such'
• Lines 159/160: see previous comment regarding the expression 'for example'
• Lines 175/176: you should justify and explain more extensively your hypothesis
• It would have been nice to visualise the selected cities, for instance with a map indicating their locations
• Line 371: Discussion instead of Discussions 
• It would be nice to provide at the end of your paper some perspectives for future work and the continuity of your analysis
• You could have added more references to complete the analysis of the previous works and the literature review

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

The paper intends to verify how much culture and creativity can represent a disruptive element in support of the economic growth of large cities in. China. The article is based on a purely quantitative approach and intends to represent a basis for guiding policy making. Appropriate use of tables and graphs; a accompanying cartography would have been useful. The bibliography is up to date. The article has an acceptable scientific soundness.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

I really appreciate your efforts in improving your manuscript according to my previous comments.

I have no further comments, but please check the following errors:

1) In the title, change the dash “—” to the colon “:” and delete the second ‘Chinese’ word (because it is already known as Chinese cities by the phrase before the colon; no need to repeat that). See below:

Current title:

Bohemian Cultural Scenes and Creative Development of

Chinese Cities ­— An Analysis of 65 Chinese Cities Using Cultural

Amenity Data

Correct title:

Bohemian Cultural Scenes and Creative Development of

Chinese Cities: An Analysis of 65 Cities Using Cultural

Amenity Data

2) In Table 2, the first row must be Bold. The title in the first row with the first column should be ‘No.’.

3) Is it okay to separate Figure 3 into three figures (Figure 3, 4 & 5) and enlarge their resolution?

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

My all questions have been considered - thank you. I'm satisfied with the answers and manuscript improvements. Wish you succeed! 

Author Response

Thank you very much for your help and kind wish!

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear author,

Thank you for your replies and your efforts. Despite the changes, unfortunately I consider that still much work is needed for your paper to merit publication. 

Best,

Author Response

Thank you very much for your help!