A Systematic Review of Morphological Transformation of Urban Open Spaces: Drivers, Trends, and Methods

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Abstract, self-explanatory, explains the background, objectives and benefits of the research, the methods used and the results of the research.

Introduction, especially in the background, the author has very clearly outlined the purpose of this paper to identify the key factors that influence the morphology of open space, including natural geographical factors, socioeconomic factors, and policy and planning factors. The literature review presented is also complete and supports the research formulation and objectives. It just needs to be reaffirmed the gap from the literature review.

The method has also been described quite clearly in data collection, but it needs to be emphasized. Re-analyze the data in answering the problem formulation in relation to the formulas and theories that have been described.

The results and discussion are strong enough to describe that the research results show that, along with the development of the city, the area of ​​green open space decreases, the structure is fragmented, and the distribution becomes increasingly disconnected. The novelty needs to be strengthened again from the results of the discussion and discussion.

From grammar, grammar, spelling are very good, it just needs to be improved, the same vocabulary pops up, maybe you need to find another vocabulary or paraphrase it.

Some tables and figures may need to be sourced.

References are complete with updated sources, both books, articles and journals. Just need to check again whether it is in accordance with the template and connect with the citation in the article.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for your affirmation, comments and suggestions. Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our researches. We have studied comments carefully and have made correction. Please see the attachment file, we wrote point-by-point response to your comments and concerns. Also, revised portion are marked in red in the paper. Please check it. Once again, thank you very much for your comments and suggestions.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Line 483 change inital to initial

Chapter 2.3 needs more analysis

The methodology part needs more explanation and analysis

I would suggest that the literature review (table 1) to be removed as appendix and only the relevant papers to be included as text.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for your comments and suggestions. Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our researches. We have studied comments carefully and have made correction. Please see the attachment file, we wrote point-by-point response to your comments and concerns. Also, revised portion are marked in red in the paper. Please check it. Once again, thank you very much for your comments and suggestions.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The review comments for this paper are as follows：

 

1）  The authors distill three types of influencing factors (natural geographical factors, socioeconomic factors, policy, and planning factors). However, this is only a summary of the current research results, from which the interaction mechanisms of these factors on urban green space evolution cannot be derived, which also weakens the originality and the impact of this paper.

2）  As seen in Table 1, the authors mainly focus on the drivers and determinants of green space but also mix the green space content at the regional scale. Since the influencing factors of green space at different scales are different, it is suggested that the authors focus on green space at the urban scale, which helps to clarify the interactive mechanisms of influencing factors and urban green space evolution and helps to provide a reference for urban planning.

3）  The use of GIS and remote sensing data to analyze urban green space changes is a standard analysis method for geographers and scholars in adjacent disciplines, based on which the authors' recommendation that the interpretation of remote sensing images can provide an understanding of the changing pattern and processes of urban green space in the conclusion section is nothing new.

4）  Since the author of this paper analyzes green space throughout, it is suggested that it would be more appropriate to change "urban open space" to "urban green space" in the title.

Comments for author File: Comments.docx

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for your comments and suggestions. Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our researches. We have studied comments carefully and have made correction. Please see the attachment file, we wrote point-by-point response to your comments and concerns. Also, revised portion are marked in red in the paper. Please check it. Once again, thank you very much for your comments and suggestions.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors added a description of the interaction mechanism of the three influencing factors in section 3.4 of the revised version. However, the main work links the specific elements included in the three influencing factors with lines or arrows, which still cannot conclude how the three main factors affect the evolution of urban green space. In other words, are there differences in the dominant influencing factors in different areas within the city during the evolution of urban green space? If there are differences, where are they manifested, and what conditions are at play? With this section, the reader needs to know very clearly how the three influencing factors affect the evolution of green space in different city areas.

 

Although the authors added the scale column in Table 1 of the revised manuscript, they did not further explain it. In this part, the authors need to clarify to the reader that the main object of this paper's review is the green space evolution within cities rather than between cities of different scales.

 

The revised manuscript indicates that urban spatial morphology research has used GIS and remote sensing analysis methods since 1980. Since this method has been used for more than 40 years, this paper should focus on the significant impacts and current limitations of GIS and remote sensing analysis methods. At the same time, the paper needs to strengthen the linkage between this part and the content of influencing factors.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer，

Thank you for giving us this opportunity to revisions. Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our research. We greatly appreciate to your help and concerning improvement to this paper. We tried our best to improve the manuscript and made some changes in the manuscript. Revised portion are marked in red in the paper.Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf