Tenure-Based Housing Spatial Patterns and Residential Segregation in Guangzhou under the Background of Housing Market Reform

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is an interesting article that provides valuable information on how housing tenure types changed in the important urban area of Guangzhou (China), its consequences on residential segregation, and where the population settles within the city–central or peripheral areas. However, several problems have been observed, making it unpublishable in its present format.

• English needs to be improved for publication. Current wording does not have an adequate standard and should be revised.
• Most of the references made are to Chinese researchers, so more international publications should be introduced. Western papers already mentioned in the theoretical framework, are quite old. Therefore, references should be extended and updated.
• Population figures and data on the number of dwellings in the area analyzed are not provided. A table with data on these issues for the two moments analyzed, should be included. On the other hand, the paper does neither explain which are the central nor the peripheral districts of the city.
• The basic spatial unit used are the sub-districts: what is the average population and the average number of dwellings of these sub-districts?
• There is not enough information on the geographic area analyzed. In other words, more details on its urban, suburban, or rural characteristics are required. For example, maps or satellite images of Guangzhou showing how the urbanized area grew between 2000 and 2010, could be added.
• Maps included in several figures are very small and their legends are barely readable. They should be enlarged, and their resolution, improved.
• The percentages of dwellings by housing tenure in 2000 and 2010 are given. However, absolute figures and growth rates (positive or negative) of the different types of tenure, during that period, are not provided.
• In the Conclusions section, the results obtained for Guangzhou should be compared to those obtained for other large Chinese metropolitan areas, such as Beijing and Shanghai, to see which are the specificities of Guangzhou and what similarities does it have with other Chinese cities.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Authors’ response:

First of all, we are really appreciated for your careful review and useful suggestions. We have amended our manuscript as follows:

(1) the English language of the full text has been revised and a certain amount of English literature has been added. (2) The boundary lines of the core region, outside of core region and the peripheral area is added as shown in Figure 1. There is a clearer boundary line in the analysis. (3) The statistical analysis of housing types in each district is added, as shown in Table 1, to show the changes of housing type structure in each district in two stages. (4) The figures in paper has been revised and the drawing resolution has been increased. (5) Since the study area has entered the whole region urbanization stage since 2000, no urbanization evolution analysis has been carried out.

Reviewer 2 Report

After reading the manuscript “Tenure-based Housing Spatial Patterns and Residential Segregation in Market Deepening Guangzhou”, I highlight next remarks:

• The length of the Abstract cannot exceed a maximum of 200 words. What is the purpose of analyzing the spatial patterns and residential segregation of housing tenure in Guangzhou? Please define a clear research aim. Key conclusions should be summarized in the Abstract as well.
• The introduction enumerates diverse descriptive arguments with scarce connection. Moreover, they neither outline background that underpins the development of the study nor identify gaps in the field to be bridged. Beyond the scope of the analysis (last paragraph of the second page), the objective of the research is vague. This section should be fully reformulated. In the same vein, Section 2 follows the same descriptive pattern as the previous one lacking a strong thread. 
• No tiered methodology was defined, instead only some indexes were enumerated as the core of the study. Criteria to select Guangzhou as the case study or the indexes adopted, limit the number of districts analyzed in the two given years or examine only 2000 and 2010 were not disclosed. It is unclear the linkage between the third map of Figure 1 with the two previous ones.
• Subsection 3.2 lacks methodological grounds since it exclusively presents results of the given indexes in 2000 and 2010. Consequently, it should be part of Section 4.
• Discussion should analyze findings with respect to other studies in the field.
• Key contributions should be summarized in the last section. Besides, limitations encountered, and future lines of research should be displayed
• Footnotes difficult to understand the text, they should be limited to mere citations, outside sources, copyright permissions and so on, but avoiding the inclusion of relevant information such as the indexes provided by authors.
• References should be updated and strengthened with more relevant contributions in the field. Aiming to preserve the editorial line of the journal, some articles published in Land should be deemed.
• Line numbering is recommended to facilitate reviewer´s task. Author is encouraged to align the content and organization of the article to guidelines defined by the journal (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability/instructions)

The article mostly consists of the mere presentation of the results of applying a set of a few given indexes to data from Guangzhou dated in 2000 and 2010. However, the study lacks scientific soundness due to the dearth of background and methodology. No theoretical and practical implications of the analysis were found.

Author Response

Authors’ response:First of all, we are really appreciated for your careful review and useful suggestions. We have amended our manuscript as follows:

(1) the abstract part has been simplified in about 200 words. The analysis goal and significance of the paper are added to in abstract. (2) The parts of introduction and literature review are revised again. The introduction part adds the research significance and objectives of the paper. The review part has been described separately according to the research content. Research gap and the significance of this research in filling the gap had been added. (3) The analysis framework of the paper is added, as shown in Figure 2. This paper adds lines in the figure to describe the relationship among three pictures in Figure 1. (4) The structure of the paper has been adjusted, and section 3.2 has been adjusted to section 4. In the main part of the paper, the research conclusions of Guangzhou are moderately compared with the existing research conclusions, and the differences are analyzed. The summary part summarizes the research conclusions, limitations and future research directions of the paper. (5) Put the contents of footnotes into the main body of the paper as an explanatory part. References were verified. The format of the paper has been modified according to the requirements of the journal format.

Reviewer 3 Report

Overall, the paper is rather well-written.  However, there are some important issues that need the author to address:

1) The paper lacks a clear conceptual framework which links the extant literature and the current research.

2) The terms "segregation" and "housing tenure" are not clearly defined. These two terms have multiple dimensions. Without clear definitions, the conceptualization of the empirical research can be flawed.

3) In fact, how the variable "housing tenure" is operationalized in the research is rather problematic. Rather than using owner-occupation, social rental and private rental, the way how the author classifies the tenure types may result in non-exclusivity. For example, in theory, a commodity housing units can be purchased by someone and leased out to another. That unit can be classified as "purchased commodity housing" and "rental commodity housing".  There is a need to differentiate self-use properties and investment properties.

4) How about those housing units that are vacant?

5) What are the limitations of the research?  How do the limitations affect the interpretation of the research findings?

6) The contribution of the paper to the theoretical development is not clear.

Author Response

Authors’ response:First of all, we are really appreciated for your careful review and useful suggestions. We have amended our manuscript as follows:

(1) the analysis framework of the paper is added, as shown in Figure 2. (2) This paper defines the meaning of housing tenure and residential segregation for this paper. (3) Since the census in China only investigated the households living in the houses, some houses were rented, the survey object was not the house owner, but the residents. Therefore, when a commodity housing was purchased and leased to others, this housing became a rental commodity housing. Similarly, vacant houses cannot be investigated.

Reviewer 4 Report

Author prepared quite original and interesting paper. The area of Author's interests is under the modern changes so the academic soundness of article is high. 

It would be very good to continue the research and add year 2020 as the third timeline point if the data is available (keeping the 10-year time distance). To be honest, the idea of closing the time horizon just on 2010 seems to be inadequate and outdated to the analyzed problem. 

Also, very sound results got in the paper thanks to comparing 2000 and 2010 could be even significantly improved by adding data from 2020.

Generally, I would say that the phenomenon noticed in the reviewed article is quite similar to effects of transition on the housing market in the CEE (Central-Eastern Europe) more or less at the same time. It might be valuable to give a closer comparison between China and CEE situation according to the subject of the paper.

Author Response

Authors’ response:First of all, we are really appreciated for your careful review and useful suggestions. We have amended our manuscript as follows:

 since the data of the seventh census in 2020 has not been published, this data cannot be used in the paper. After the data source is released, we will continue this study to compare the differences between 2000, 2010 and 2020.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The second version of the article is an improvement on the original text. The English is now better, allowing to read its content more fluently. Most of this reviewer's suggestions have been introduced. However, the following: aspects were not taken into account and still need to be incorporated to the text:

• I suggested that references should be extended and updated. New Western author references have been introduced. However, the total number of references has gone from 56 to 38, and the most recent ones are from 2014. Therefore, I still insist that the references should be extended and especially updated. For example, residential segregation is a topic on which much literature has been recently published. Adding references on it, would, for instance, allow to extend the theoretical framework on (2) residential segregation (page 3). Presently, it is only a seven-line long paragraph, explaining segregation index changes. Nothing is said on how urban segregation has changed in the last decade (whether it has increased or decreased, and why is it so).
• I also said: "There is not enough information on the geographic area analyzed". I still believe that geographic characterisation of the area analysed, is poor. More information should be provided for non-Chinese readers. What is the population of Guangzhou? How did it change between 2000 and 2010? I believe that household changes cannot be analysed without previously mentioning how has the population forming these households changed. Table 1 gives the figure of about 150,000 households in 2000 and 250,000 households in 2010. However, the city of Guangzhou has more than 16 million inhabitants. Therefore, I assume that only a part, the most central one, has been analyzed. Is it justifiable to analyse the city centre without taking its metropolitan area into account? In sum, think this part of the description and justification of the analyzed area still needs to be improved.
• Finally, I said: "In the Conclusions section, the results obtained for Guangzhou should be compared to those obtained for other large Chinese metropolitan areas, such as Beijing and Shanghai, to see which are the specificities of Guangzhou and what similarities does it have with other Chinese cities". I believe that the interesting results obtained in Guangzhou still need to be improved, by adding more information on the context, since the text presently only mentions -very briefly- the cases of Hong Kong (a special administrative region) and Singapore (an independent state). However, there is no information on the situation in other Chinese cities.

I hope that these improvements, increasing the quality of the article, will be introduced.

Author Response

First of all, we are really appreciated for your careful review and useful suggestions. We have amended our manuscript as follows:

(1) We added some literature, especially literature on residential segregation in recent years. In the last round of revision, some literature was simplified. This revision mainly increases the research literature of residential segregation in recent years, including the measurement methods and empirical analysis of residential segregation in European and American countries.

(2) we strengthen the regional background for this paper. First, we add the statistics and analysis of the population, number of households, family households and the number of housing units surveyed in census for research area, Guangzhou and the whole China, Beijing, Shanghai, and compare the differences among the research area and the whole country, Beijing and Shanghai (see Table 1). We also add the comparative analysis of the differences among the research area and the whole country, Beijing and Shanghai from the aspect of housing type structure (see Table 2).

(3) In terms of housing type structure and the extent of residential segregation, we appropriately increase the comparison between the research area and big cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, as well as the comparison of European and American countries based on existing literature.

Reviewer 2 Report

• Research aim was not disclosed in the Abstract.
• The Introduction does not outline background that underpins the development of the study nor identify gaps in the field to be bridged.
• Section 2 presents diverse concepts without a clear connection. There is no linkage between the different subsections.
• No tiered methodology was defined, instead only some indexes were enumerated as the core of the study. It is unclear the connection between the third map of Figure 1 with the two previous ones dated on 2000 and 2010.
• Discussion should analyze findings with respect to other studies in the field.
• Key contributions should be summarized in the last section in addition to limitations encountered, and future lines of research.
• Footnotes of Tables 2 and 3 are unnecessary, please remove it since the full denomination of abbreviations should be embedded in the text along with further information.
• References should be updated and strengthened with more relevant contributions in the field. Aiming to preserve the editorial line of the journal, some articles published in Land should be deemed.
• There is no connection between lines 604 to 611 and the rest of the paper. Besides, referred equations were omitted.

Author Response

First of all, we are really appreciated for your careful review and useful suggestions. We have amended our manuscript as follows:

(1) we add the research aim in the abstract.”with the research aim to analyze the internal logic of urban housing distribution and residential segregation in urban China using the Guangzhou as an example”.

(2) we add the possible research contributions for this paper in the parts of introduction and review. “The existing research lacks the analysis of the changes in the internal logic of housing distribution and the resulting residential segregation in China's big cities since the reform of China's housing system in 1998, especially under the background of China's rapid housing marketization in the 10 years from 2000 to 2010. Therefore, taking Guangzhou as a case, this paper analyzes the changes in the housing distribution mechanism and the degree of tenure-based residential segregation in Chinese big cities from the micro scale, and to some extent, it can enrich the existing research”.

(3) Adjust the title of the literature review to 2.1 housing choice behavior, 2.2 residential segregation, 2.3 tenure-based residential segregation in China，and strengthen the review of residential segregation.

 (4)The upper figure of Figure 1 shows the research area in 2000 and 2010. Due to the adjustment of Administrative boundary in 2005, the boundary was slightly different for the year of 2000 and 2010, while the lower figure shows the location of the research area in Guangzhou.

(5) we add the comparison of findings with respect to other studies in the field, and remove footnotes of Tables 3 and 4. (5)some literature in recent years have been added, especially those on residential segregation.

Reviewer 3 Report

I don't have any further comments on the paper.

Author Response

Thanks  a lot.

Round 3

Reviewer 2 Report

• No tiered methodology was defined yet, instead some indexes were presented as the core of the study.
• Key contributions should be summarized in the last section in addition to limitations encountered, and future lines of research.
• Aiming to preserve the editorial line of the journal, some articles published in Land should be deemed to update and strengthen existing references.
• Miscellaneous comments. Check title of Figure 1. The whole manuscript reflects a weak thread among sections and subsections, i.e., Sections 2 and 4. Several typewriting mistakes were found. Editing should be also enhanced.

Author Response

Authors’ response:

First of all, we are really appreciated for your careful review and useful suggestions. We have amended our manuscript as following:

(1) No tiered methodology was defined yet, instead some indexes were presented as the core of the study.

Response: The revised version adds the reasons for the indicators selection of residential segregation. ”Massey and Denton (1988) classify the types and spatial manifestations of segregation into five distinct dimensions: evenness, exposure, concentration, clustering, and centralization . This paper mainly measure the tenure-based residential segregation from two aspects: the centralized distribution form of various houses and the spatial relationship between this form and the urban center from single group and two groups. therefore, the paper selects the two dimensions of evenness and centralization calculated from single group and two groups. Index of dissimilarity (ID) index and Centralization index are simple, but practical and widely used, dimensions of evenness and centralization (single group: Segregation index (IS) and Absolute centralization index (ACE)) and two groups (Index of dissimilarity (ID) and Relative centralization index (RCE)) are adopted to analyze the tenure-based residential segregation.”

(2)Key contributions should be summarized in the last section in addition to limitations encountered, and future lines of research.  

Response: The revised version adds the possible contribution, limitations and future lines of research.” The possible contribution of this paper is to take Guangzhou as an example to analyze the situation of tenure-based residential segregation in China's big cities under the background of that the market has acted as the basic force for housing resource allocation after China completely abolished welfare housing distribution and entered the stage of rapid housing marketization. The shortcomings for this paper is as follows: (1) the 7th census has not been published yet, so we don’t know the tenure-based residential segregation of China’s big cities during the period of 2010 to 2020 with also rapid development of housing marketization; (2) the paper only selects some key indicators of residential segregation measures, which affects the comprehensiveness of residential segregation analysis to some extent. In the future research, it is necessary to add more indicators and include the data of the 7th census into the analysis, so as to comprehensively analyze the residential segregation in China's big cities after China's housing market-oriented reform.”

(3)Aiming to preserve the editorial line of the journal, some articles published in Land should be deemed to update and strengthen existing references.

Response: The revised version adds some high relevant literature published in Chinese journals and in "sustainability" Journal.

(4)Miscellaneous comments. Check title of Figure 1. The whole manuscript reflects a weak thread among sections and subsections, i.e., Sections 2 and 4. Several typewriting mistakes were found. Editing should be also enhanced.

Response：The revised version proofreads the English language carefully and improves the editing level. Section 2 the literature review structure has been adjusted to straighten out the relationship. The structural relationship of section 4 is also described as “Tenure-based housing spatial patterns is conducive to the analysis of the centralized distribution pattern of all types of housing, while the residential segregation can assess the overall extent of residential differentiation.”

Thanks a lot.

Liu wangbao

2022.4.4

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf