Jane Jacobs’s Criteria for Urban Vitality: A Geospatial Analysis of Morphological Conditions in Quito, Ecuador
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 2)
Dear authors, I have reviewed the manuscript 'Jane Jacobs’s criteria for urban vitality: a geospatial analysis of morphological conditions in Quito, Ecuador.' which aims at measuring urban vitality in a neighborhood of Quito-Ecuador", after reading and analyzing it, first I would like to state that this version has improved significantly in relation to the previous document. But even so, I have the following comments that should be addressed by the authors:
In the summary it is described that the data were taken from the "municipality" I think the wording on this point should be improved and make it clear what it refers to because politically this can be interpreted differently depending on the region where it is read, in case it is accepted and published.
In the last two paragraphs of the introduction please associate very well the research gaps listed i) and ii) with the research questions that arise from them.
In the last paragraph of the introduction when describing the objective, reference is made to a comparison applying different indices... then 'the objectives' are mentioned. My question, what are these objectives? Because initially you only identify one precisely and if it is more than one, describe more precisely.
On Line 131, it would be better to write like this: "for a better understanding of the reader this document in section X describes ........ in section X presents........
Regarding the methodology used, I do not have much to say since I consider that the authors have tested and cited its applicability. But this is not enough to not be critical of it, especially because of the subjectivity it may have. I say this because I know first hand the reality of the country and the neighborhood/area under study and suddenly the vitality urban is not attached to the reality that the population or tourists live nowadays. This is something that the authors must necessarily address in the discussion.
It is necessary that the anthropic/social/human issue be addressed in the discussion, considering that we are talking about an analysis of human vitality, it is essential that the authors explain why social factors such as security (crime, robbery, murders) are not considered, presence of organic, inorganic and human waste. I do not understand how this cannot have an impact on the level of vitality urban.
The limitations of their research and future studies should be reorganized in the conclusions section precisely. In the discussion the authors should focus on analyzing their results and compare with other studies that use this methodology or a modification of this one and see those changes, and above all, I consider they should be very critical with the methodology used in this study, does it really address all the factors to consider a "happy humanity" or "people living in a happy ecosystem", does that currently happen in the study neighborhood?
In the last paragraph of the conclusions it is necessary to clearly and precisely narrate the limitations of their study (this I request to be analyzed in the discussion), together with future studies based on their results.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report (Previous Reviewer 3)
The authors have greatly improved the paper. In its current form, it is much more legible and consistent. I hope to see it published. I appreciate your dedication and effort. I have some final comments.
In the abstract, add a comma after "In the study area". In general, please check the punctuation throughout the manuscript.
Please mention the use of three indexes in the abstract; one sentence would suffice.
Please do not use the term "highly controversial" for the book; perhaps "highly influential" will be better.
The sentence "Most studies of urban vitality have been developed in Asia" is not accurate; you have cited 26 papers only related to Manhattan! You can say, for instance, that it has a strong precedent in studies exploring Asian cities.
Table 1 is still not readable; I recommend rotating it and making it a full page.
The sum of dimension scores for index 2 does not add up to 100 (Table 1). I hope this is a typing error and not something missing from the analysis.
Under Materials and Methods (methods in this case), the data collection method and resources must be explained briefly. Maybe one paragraph. I know that these have been annotated as part of Table 1, but they need to be briefly explained in the text.
In Table 2, it is not clear what P1, P2, and P3 are referring to (these are the only instances where these are used in the manuscript). I assume these are referring to the final urban viability maps presented in the last row of Figure 4. Please make sure the figure is consistent with the table.
Research questions need to be a part of the introduction; discussion is not the best place to introduce the main research questions. I think adding them in the paragraph where the gap is presented will be better. Then you can address these questions in the discussion.
The conclusion is still weak and does not reflect the full spectrum of the findings of the study. The conclusion needs to clearly address the gap presented in lines 104–122. In the conclusion section, you must add a few things: first, how your study has contributed to the gap in the literature; second, highlight the main findings of the study in a systematic manner; third, the limitations of the study; and fourth, recommendations for future studies.
In the author's contribution, please use initials and not full names.
Author Response
Please see the attachment and refer to reviewer 2 in the document.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report (Previous Reviewer 3)
Thank you for the systematic and thorough revisions.
This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The article concerns the relationship between social behavior in the city and the urban structure. Both areas: social and spatial, have been presented in a digitized form, in accordance with the adopted method of analysis. Without undermining this method, I would like to draw attention to the need to look at the issue in a more humane way, as Jane Jacobs saw it. Both the nature of the society inhabiting the study area and the structure of the development play an important role in the analysis. The article would be more understandable if photos of busy public spaces, projections of buildings around which traffic is concentrated, and social groups living in this territory were included. I consider it superfluous to publish all the detailed studies, and instead I would propose to expand the chapter with results and conclusions, which are treated too schematically.Author Response
Dear Sir/Madam
I highly appreciate your comments in order to improve the quality of my manuscript. I have one question: what do you mean by: " I consider it superfluous to publish all the detailed studies, and instead I would propose to expand the chapter with results and conclusions, which are treated too schematically". A second reviewer meant that the chapter of conclusions is too long.
Thanks again for your help
Nuria
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear authors, I have reviewed the document "Jane Jacobs’ conditions for urban vitality in Quito: a geospatial analysis.":, prior to further processing, the following improvements are needed:
Do not repeat the words of the title in the key words section.
Table 1 is not cited, the call should be made before its appearance, the description is at the top. THE table should be synthesized, it is too large for the introduction.
The introduction is too long please summarize it only in two pages at most.
Figure 1, study area is not cited, i.e. the call is not made before its appearance.
The methodology should be rewritten, improve the design, I ask: Do you consider if in the way it is it will be replicable?
The presentation of results is not readable.
The discussion is very extensive and does not stick to the reality of the results. I recommend generating a paragraph for each objective, question or hypothesis for discussion and conclusions, the order will improve your design.
Author Response
Dear Sir/Madam
First of all, I would like to thank you for your comments to improve my manuscript. Second, I would like to ask you something specific. You marked with an "must be improved" section: "Is the content succinctly described and contextualized with respect to previous and present theoretical background and empirical research (if applicable) on the topic?" Do you refer to the suggestion of summarizing the introduction?
Thanks in advance
Nuria
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
The paper is a large-scale endeavor and I admire it. I commend the authors for this significant undertaking. The paper includes many challenging concepts, both in terms of theory and methodology. This, however, becomes the major problem of the study. It tries to do too many things at once without being thorough about any of them. This paper looks like three different papers condensed into one chaotic manuscript. The problem here is clarity of objective and consistency. There are many different concepts, ideas, formulas, and viewpoints. The analyses are sound and correct, to the best of my knowledge. This can be a great paper if you work on it.
The elaboration of the urban dimensions derived from Jane Jacobs’ work is not clear. First, the abstract mentions five urban dimensions "established" by Jacobs, but it seems that these are your selection because her book has four chapters (this point has been mentioned in the text in line 54, so in the abstract, I would say "derived from"). Nevertheless, the most important dimension in Jacob’s work, which is diversity, is not mentioned in how these dimensions have been defined. Even regarding the first one, Jacobs does not call it density but concentration. Additionally, the text mentions four main dimensions plus two secondary dimensions, which adds up to six, but the abstract mentions five. Later in the case study (page 283), it is mentioned that these are "urban vitality dimensions" announced by Jacobs (announcement is a very strange word here). Even later in the analysis in Line 609, "The measurement of people’s concentration is composed of the following five dimensions: density, land use mixture, contact opportunity, accessibility, and border vacuums." Well, it is very difficult to follow the consistency of the paper sometimes. The main point here is that the authors must be very clear about the scope and limitations of the study. You selected six dimensions derived from Jacobs’ work, and the others are out of the scope of this study and can be suggested for future studies (for instance, safety, assimilating children, gradual money, cataclysmic money, etc.).
One of the fundamental problems of the study is its approach toward the hypothesis. The null hypothesis associated can only be rejected (the hypothesis cannot be rejected) if multiple neighborhoods are analyzed and the data show significant differences when accounting for neighborhood scale. How can we talk about the significance of neighborhood scales if only one is analyzed? To fix this, you can either rephrase your hypothesis or use research questions instead. This is more visible in the discussion, where it seems that the outcome of the analysis is people’s concentration, but the hypothesis is based on vitality. Can this be clarified? It seems that the overlaying of three indices aims to explore the possibility of people’s concentration.
Table 1. is not suitable (legible) for journal publication. It is a very valuable matrix, but you need to reformulate it in a way that can be legible within the journal format. Maybe rotating the headings will help, or you might create a legend with numbers.
In Table 2, indexes need to be annotated in the heading.
Line 227: "Regarding the second gap, studies do not usually illustrate urban vitality on a neighborhood scale specifically, with the morphological characterization of blocks [...]"; is this statement specifically about Quito? Because there are many studies addressing this issue at the neighborhood scale. Please clarify.
Line 373: "Finally, a minus sign has been considered in the indicators, which integrate a negative influence for the people’s concentration calculation based on Jane Jacobs’ postulates." What does it mean that a minus sign has been added? Subtracted from? Because I am not clear on how the sum of these percentages can come to 100 with all the subtractions (Table 3).
You use “In this sense” too much! Diversify your transitions.
I will not accept the paper if the figures are not formatted in a legible way. It is not possible to read anything from figures 3-7. Figure 8., for example, is acceptable.
Line 198, “The most relevant indicator in the aged buildings dimension is the building age [16,18,21,23,28].” Is this really necessary?
Author Response
Dear incredible reviewer,
First of all, I would really, really, really like to thank you because you absolutely understood the weaknesses (and potential) of the manuscript and suggested very smart changes to improve it. Second, I was also pleased with your comment that you admire the huge work we have done (even though this could be a very challenging problem in the generation of a rigorous manuscript). Third, I really appreciate that you were trying to respect the complexity of the work, not eliminating essential parts, but trying to justify and order it properly.
In this sense, I have three "minor" questions and one "big" question" (written in bold) :
1. Table 1 is not suitable. Maybe we can eliminate it (because all 25 papers are included in quotes along the article and, consequently, appear in the bibliography). Do you think table 1 brings something extra to our manuscript?
2. Line 198, “The most relevant indicator in the aged buildings dimension is the building age [16,18,21,23,28].” Is this really necessary? Do you think it would be better not to mention the aged buildings dimension in the manuscript because we are not using this dimension to calculate people’s concentration? (Instead, I would always refer to 5 dimensions derived from Jane Jacobs).
3. I will not accept the paper if the figures are not formatted in a legible way. It is not possible to read anything from figures 3-7. Figure 8., for example, is acceptable. Regardless of the representation quality, which of course needs to be improved (maybe with the rotation of columns and rows). Do you think that the results section is solid and clear?
3. I considered using the words: "people's concentration" instead of "urban vitality" in the title. However, I discarded it because I thought that authors would look for "urban vitality" more than for "people's concentration". After reading your review, I think we should be more specific and use always "people's concentration", not only in the title but also for the hypothesis and the rest of the manuscript (after justifying in the introduction why the papers focus on "people's concentration" instead of "diversity"). This refers also to the hypothesis, which should aim to explore people's concentration at block scale with the overlaying of three indices. Now, the question: does this hypothesis sound more plausible and more aligned with the approach of the manuscript?
Thanks again for your help!
Nuria
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
Dear Authors
The paper addresses a very important topic. However, there are many places throughout the paper where the details are not clear enough.
1. 1. Line 52- 83, Too detailed and should be summarized.
2. 1. In line 139, it is preferable to use Authors elaboration rather than own elaboration.
3. Related work section: is disorganized and poorly structured.
4. What method did the authors employ? How about data analysis?
5. The figures are not clear and readable, and the captions are inadequate.
6. What does "Index 1" mean in line 317?
7. Line 318, why three index? What is the reasoning behind the authors selections?
8. Because the authors wanted to investigate Jan Jacobs' conditions for urban vitality, you should refer to Jacobs Criteria rather than the criteria extracted from the literature review. See the papers by Wang et al., 2022. https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings12101586
9. What is diffraction between tables 2 and 3? Line 369 "Index 2 has not been considered (area of each neighborhood and Road Network Density Index) ..." remove from table if you did not use this index. Please provide a detailed index list for your study.
10. Line, 418, Did the authors conduct a survey? Building Use Mix Index (BUMI), Residential/Nonresidential (RNR) Index, Benches and Presence of sidewalks. how they used to survey for those index. If you used the survey, please provide more information.
11. What does the 30km/h area mean in Tab 3 line 408?
- Line 389: source of this formula? What do you mean by "media"?
- Line 427 to 441: additional information for what? Is it from table 3 or table 2???
- Line 444 to 448 Dimensions, indicators, or index? Index was used somewhere, and index was used somewhere else...
- How did the authors weight those indicators in line 452? Which method did they use? And why did you not weigh it?
- Line 716, The authors used others but just applied the index to the case study area; where are the new approaches and suggestions?
- The authors only discussed the methodological aspect of their paper in their discussion. This section is for analyses, and it interprets their findings, not their methods.
- The author did not mention the research result in the conclusion, which is the same as the discussion.
- Lines 845 and 847, remove the references if it’s the conclusion section; the authors should have concluded the paper results and questions.
- The manuscript needs to be edited in English.
Author Response
please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
