China’s Urban Regeneration Evolution from 1949 to 2022: From the Perspective of Governance Mode

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear authors,

Thank you very much for your research.

This manuscript describes the evolution of urban regeneration in China under the lens of governance. In doing so, the article retraces a timeline from 1949 until 2022 and four specific periods. In each of these periods the manuscript examines the core policies, sheds light on some projects and explains the urban regeneration governance model. The added value of the article is the analysis of urban regeneration governance evolution in different periods and the influence of interrelationships on decision-making. The stated objective of the authors is to “raise the awareness of China’s urban regeneration and provide references and experiences for other developing countries as they facing the challenges during urbanization”.

The authors indeed manage to achieve the 1^st element of the objective which is awareness raising but the second one in relation to providing reference is partially achieved. In order to do so it is advisable to:

-undertake a structured literature review of what is meant by urban regeneration and the different governance models: unitary, binary, tripartite, pluralistic, & co-governance. In order to help other countries contextualise and adapt such models it is important to provide a literature review but also the main characteristic of these models in order to adapt them to their specific case-studies. Moreover, under each period, some cases are mentioned very briefly. It is advisable to provide a more in-depth context with elements related to the duration of the intervention, the needed investment, and a PESTEL analysis to better grasp the urban evolution in relation to the political, economic, social, technological, environmental and legal factors of each historic moment.

Finally, the article lacks references but it would be most probably enriched with a lot of relevant sources in the literature review.  

Comments on the Quality of English Language

No comments

Author Response

Comments 1: Undertake a structured literature review of what is meant by urban regeneration and the different governance models: unitary, binary, tripartite, pluralistic, & co-governance. In order to help other countries contextualise and adapt such models it is important to provide a literature review but also the main characteristic of these models in order to adapt them to their specific case-studies.

Response 1: We understand and value your feedback. After reading more studies, we made a deeper literature review on unitary governance, binary governance, tripartite governance and pluralistic governance. The reason for arranging the literature review in the Section 7 is because the main content of this part is to improve the theoretical understanding of diverse governance modes, and the subsequent discussion part will be more convincing based on the understanding improvement.

Comments 2: It is advisable to provide a more in-depth context with elements related to the duration of the intervention, the needed investment, and a PESTEL analysis to better grasp the urban evolution in relation to the political, economic, social, technological, environmental and legal factors of each historic moment.

 

Response 2: Thanks for your suggestions and we completely full agree with you. We have refined the Subsection Practical Exploration of Section 3, 4, 5 and 6. Through more data collecting and literature reading, the background information and specific implementation process of each project has been added to this paper. In addition, in this round of revision, we also added some figures to help readers strengthen their cognition of these projects at the subjective level.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This paper effectively presents the historical evolution of Chinese urban regeneration governance from 1949 to 2022, categorizing it into four phases: government-led, binary (government-enterprise), ternary negotiation, and pluralistic governance. It comprehensively analyzes the progression towards a more inclusive and complex governance structure, identifies key challenges, and provides valuable recommendations. However, it crucially lacks a methodology section detailing the data collection and analysis methods employed. Additionally, several paragraphs lack bibliographic references, and some sentences should be clarified. Please refer to the following suggestions for improvement.

Section 1: at the end of the introduction it would be useful to provide the structure of the paper, so that the reader can easily follow its rationale.   
Ln 25-34: missing citation
Ln 44-45: not clear, please rephrase (maybe "to" should be deleted?)

Section 2: it is not clear why the first period starts in 1949 if the significant node is in 1963. Something is missing in Figure 1? It would be helpful to spend some word to describe the significant nodes that determined the passage from one period to another.

Section 4
ln 180-193: missing citation

Subsection 4.3
Ln 253-258: missing citation
Ln 272-273: missing citation

Section 5
Ln 280-281: not clear, please rephrase
Ln 279-302: missing citation
Ln 307-315: Does this summary reflect laws and regulations outlined in Table 3? If so, it would be helpful to mention this at the beginning of the paragraph for better clarity.

Subsection 5.2
Ln 320-327: missing citation

Subsection 5.3
Ln 361-366: missing citation

Section 6
Ln 369-380: missing citation

Subsection 6.1
Ln 401-408: Does this summary reflect laws and regulations outlined in Table 4? If so, it would be helpful to mention this at the beginning of the paragraph for better clarity.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

English language requires comprehensive revision.

Author Response

Comments 1: Missing Citations

Response 1: Thanks for your reading and your detailed suggestions. In this round of revision, we have carefully revised all the points you mentioned and added citations to make this article more scientific and rigorous.

 

Comments 2: At the end of the introduction, it would be useful to provide the structure of the paper, so that the reader can easily follow its rationale.

Response 2: Thank you for the suggestions on article structure improvement. The structure of this paper has been added in the Section 1. It can be seen from Ln76 to Ln 82.

 

Comments 3: It is not clear why the first period starts in 1949 if the significant node is in 1963. Something is missing in Figure 1? It would be helpful to spend some word to describe the significant nodes that determined the passage from one period to another.

Response 3: After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the central government of China had already defined the follow-up construction goals to the development status at that time. It is therefore inaccurate to date 1963 as the starting date of the first phase. However, the original formulation of this article does not clarify this situation, so the second paragraph of Section 2 added the relevant requirements of the Chinese government during the First Five-Year Plan. Figure 1 was also redrawn. In addition, the key points in the evolution phase are discussed in Section 2 to clarify the reason for the division of the periods.

 

Comments 4: Does this summary reflect laws and regulations outlined in Table 3 & 4? If so, it would be helpful to mention this at the beginning of the paragraph for better clarity.

Response 4: In order to further link the paragraph on the impacts of policies on governance modes at the regional level with Table 3 and Table 4, this round of revision interprets the relevant content of the specific policy documents. The revisions are added from Ln431 to Ln456 and Ln587 to Ln600.

 

Comments 5: English language requires comprehensive revision.

Response 5: In this round of revision, we have carried out a comprehensive review of the English writing of this paper and made some improvements to a certain extent. However, due to tight time and limited English writing ability, this round of revision failed to achieve the final result in this paper. We would like to consider turning to a professional English academic writing editing organization for further improvement.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf