Research on Urban Street Network Structure Based on Spatial Syntax and POI Data

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The article is mainly divided into three parts. Firstly, the kernel density method and integration analysis are used to determine that there is a positive correlation between the global integral value of the street and the POI value. Secondly, by combining the functional density indicators with the integrated analysis, streets can identify the obvious deviation from the overall trend, and classify the characteristics according to their characteristics to reveal the reasons for their contradictions; Finally, three optimization schemes are proposed for three types of streets.

1.    What each item in the formula represents is not clearly explained, as in formula (1).

2.    There are three kinds of lines in Figure 1: blue represents water, gray represents road, and red dashed lines, among which the red dashed lines are too eye-catching. Do you need to explain them? If not, can you delete them?

3.    As shown in Table 6 and Figure 7, although Binjiang Road has a small available density but many distributed POIs, but its deviation degree is still low. Is there any other factor? Can it be classified as a potential street?

4.    There are many errors in the content of the article. For example, Table 7 only contains two types of streets, which are divided into two types of potential streets and one type of anomalous street by street features.

5.    There is no explanation for Table 4. In Table 4, the relationship between street length and the number of points of interest and functional density is not reasonably summarized and explored.

6.     The following studies were recommended to be properly cited: [1]

Accessibility Evaluation of Public Service Facilities in Villages and Towns Based on POI Data: A Case Study of Suining County, Xuzhou, China[J].Journal of urban planning and development, 2023. [2] AI-Empowered Speed Extraction via Port-Like Videos for Vehicular Trajectory Analysis. IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, 2023. 24(4): p. 4541-4552.

English can be improved.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

1. The paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the street networks in Guilin's 'Two Rivers and Four Lakes' scenic area, employing spatial syntax and POI big data effectively. However, the technical section could benefit from more detailed explanations of the methodologies and data processing steps. This would enhance the reader's understanding of how the analysis was conducted and the reliability of the results.

2.  

3. While the study provides valuable insights into urban street network structures, it could be further enriched by a deeper exploration of the interplay between different types of data and their collective impact on urban planning. Specifically, incorporating additional comparative studies or case studies could provide a more robust validation of the proposed framework.

4.  

5. The authors are encouraged to consider the potential impact of emerging technologies on their research in future work. For instance, exploring how advanced language models, as discussed in the paper by Liu, Y., Wu, F., Liu, Z., Wang, K., Wang, F., & Qu, X. (2023) 'Can language models be used for real-world urban-delivery route optimization?', could innovate or optimize current methodologies and findings in urban street network analysis.

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Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Thank you for your work on this research, I enjoyed reading your manuscript. Below are my comments, I hope they are useful for you and help improve your current manuscript. 

Line 40: You say that traditional geometric analyses aren't possible in Guilin due to water and terrain. You should elaborate on this as many cities with complex water systems and terrain have been studied with traditional systems. More specifically, explain why these traditional methods are not available for Guilin. It would be beneficial to support these claims with previous literature as this is a foundation for the purpose of your research. 

Line 52-53: I really appreciate that you state this point and make it a center through your manuscript. 

Line 96: Minor comment - Your transition to start talking about POIs is a bit awkward and hard to understand. It could be improved.

Line 98-99: There is a paragraph break here that seems unnecessary. 

Line 100: I am not sure what you mean by the sentence "Given the ubiquitous use of mobile devices...". It seems irrelevant to the topic and to POIs. Please clarify.

Line 134: Please be more specific in the urban street data collected from OSM. Is it just the drivable network? also pedestrian? are you focusing on specific classifications? etc. As well, OSM data is not as good in East Asia as it is in other parts of the world (notably West Europe and North America), it would be good to cite other papers that have also used this data for China. Or to find a local source for road network data. 

Line 135: Is the satellite map from Baidu or from the Guilin government? Additionally I had a hard time understanding what you mean by combining the OSM data with the Baidu map. 

Line 142: Please verify that this usage of the API is in in line with the Baidu map API terms of use.

Line 146: It could be useful to have a small table with descriptive statistics or more information in text about the counts for each of the POI groups. I am curious about the total count for each POI group across all of Guilin. 

Line 213: I like the technical streamline but it's missing it's figure heading.

Figure 1: You're missing the dashed red line in the legend. If it's on the map, it should be represented in the legend as well. 

Figure 2: Is a bit hard to read and it's not mentioned directly in the text. You are also missing the dashed red line on the legend. As well, how did you classify the groupings of the integration values for the map? I see 10 categories but not sure how they were split. Along with that, what is the justification for that method to split the data into the visual categories? 

Section 3.2: Was this analysis performed on all streets in the area? I see some outside of the main study area in Figure 2 and you mention it a bit on line 243-244, but not sure if those are just the main streets or what. It's important to consider the full network when doing this analysis. 

Section 3.2: For integration did you consider different distances when formulating your analsyis? As well, did you consider "choice"? Please check out this Github repo to better understand Space Syntax and how distance, integration/choice, can change the interpretation of the results: https://github.com/spacesyntax/OpenMapping

Figure 3,5: Again, how did you categorize the data for the visualization? and why that method? 

Figure 6: Legend title is cut off. And please explain the logic for categorization of the data. 

Line 332: I would assume functional density and kernel density will have a strong correlation, they both incorporate POI count. 

Line 333-334: It would be good to elaborate on why the correlations are close between the two. 

Table 7: It's a bit hard to read, some minor stylization can help improve this. 

Line 358: How did you classify the street types? 

Line 363: Is there any literature to support this? 

I do consider the manuscript to be written well. However, it is a bit tricky to read in some parts, especially at the beginning. Please give it a deep and thorough edit. 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments were addressed.

English can be improved.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The technical aspects of this paper are too weak. And none of the discussions in the last round of reviews that asked the authors to add some new technologies were added.

In addition, this paper is a typical paper in the field of Intelligent Transportation Systems, but there are many Chinese dissertations in the references, which makes people suspect that the dissertations of Chinese master's degree students have been translated into English.

The reference section needs to add journal papers in related fields, such as Communications in transportation research, Transportation research part e, etc. The above journal papers should account for a certain percentage.

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Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Thank you for your improvements! I appreciate you taking the time to address the comments. 

I also must admit that I have not considered the impact that concepts such as feng shui have had on infrastructure. However, it is highly interesting and I'm happy to see you've added that. 

Very minor things, overall the writing is understandable.

My biggest comment is that it's advisable to avoid expressions like "as a matter of fact" (nothing is fact, everything is theory) and to not use absolutes (i.e. "always", "every", etc). Here is a brief blog post about those: 

https://proofreadingpal.com/proofreading-pulse/writing-guides/avoid-absolutes/

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 3

Reviewer 2 Report

The author may lack experience in publishing academic papers. After reading your response, if it had been reviewed by other reviewers, they would have rejected the manuscript. In the response, the author should explain and add to the paper as necessary. It is not usual to start every response with 'We could not agree with this comment'. Most comments are actually quite modifiable, e.g. you didn't use any new machine learning techniques, but I've lowered the bar in the last previous round by giving you clear advice that you should at least discuss. References are usually to the top journals in the field, and it is not appropriate to cite four master's theses. Street space is not a field of study, if you're talking about smart cities, that's fine.

My comment: reference 36,37 are from 2021, update some references from those two journals for 2023, it would be better if there are new technologies, technology vision and so on.

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Author Response

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