Land Development 1985–2023 as a Function of Road Improvement, Employment, and Mobility: A Case Study of Tennessee

Response to Reviewer 1 Comments

1. Summary

We sincerely thank you for your valuable feedback on our manuscript titled "Land development 1985-2023 as a function of road improvement, employment, and mobility: A case study of Tennessee". We appreciate your detailed insights and constructive suggestions, which have significantly improved the quality and clarity of our work. Below, we provide a point-by-point response to the reviewer’s comments.

2. Questions for General Evaluation

Reviewer’s Evaluation

Response and Revisions

Does the introduction provide sufficient background and include all relevant references?

Can be improved

We have improved the introduction by adding recent case studies.

Are all the cited references relevant to the research?

Can be improved

We have cited more recent relevant research.

Is the research design appropriate?

Yes

Are the methods adequately described?

Can be improved

We have added a conceptual framework and methodological flowchart.

Are the results clearly presented?

Can be improved

Results have been supported with appropriate graphs and plots.

Are the conclusions supported by the results?

Yes

3. Point-by-point response to Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Comments 1: The introductory and concluding discussions about the metaverse provide a novel framing but feel tangential to the empirical analysis. Either strengthen this connection through a clear conceptual or analytical framework or reduce emphasis to avoid diluting the core message.

Response 1: Thank you for the suggestion. As suggested, we have much reduced emphasis on the metaverse in both the introduction and concluding discussions to avoid diluting the core message. The deleted parts are clearly visible and can be easily identified [we keep the tracking mode on so the deleted items have a strikethrough and the added items are those underlined in red and blue].

Comments 2: The regression models are well-specified but would benefit from supporting information about model assumptions—such as checks for spatial autocorrelation, heteroskedasticity, and multicollinearity.

Response 2: We improved the manuscript by providing supporting information about model assumptions, including checks for heteroskedasticity and multicollinearity (See Figure 10). The following statements have been added (see Section 2.3.1 Modeling Approach):

“Specifically, to avoid multicollinearity, we checked whether independent variables are correlated by calculating the Variance Inflation Factor (VIF) and used a common rule of thumb with the VIF values greater than 5 to indicate moderate multicollinearity.  We additionally tested for heteroskedasticity in our linear regression model and examined if the error terms are normally distributed in a residual analysis. In the residual plot, a fairly constant variance of the residuals is observed across the range of fitted values. This approach aligns with contemporary practices in land use modeling, where OLS regression combined with diagnostic test such as VIF and residual analysis are used to ensure model robustness and validity [25,26].”

Comments 3: Consider adding a brief section acknowledging limitations and suggesting future research directions.

Response 3: We have acknowledged our study limitations and also suggested some future research directions. The following statements have been added in the Conclusion section:

“This study has limitations. Data used in this analysis has been taken from the physical world, potentially limiting our understanding of the impact of virtual environments on real-world experiences. Future research directions should focus on this impact to improve the quality of life for city residents and examine how metaverse-based principles can be used towards solutions of the problems inherent to urban infrastructure and governance systems of the physical world. One example of the application would be redefining urban landscapes to meet the needs of the emerging digital economy and infrastructure in the near future.”

Comments 4: There is inconsistency in figure numbering. Specifically, Figure 3 and Figure 5 are referenced in the text but not included in the manuscript, which disrupts the reading flow and interpretation. Please verify and correct figure numbering and cross-references throughout.

Response 4: We have removed the inconsistency in figure numbering from the manuscript.

Comments 5: Once defined (e.g., VMT, NLCD), acronyms should not be redefined in subsequent sections. Removing repetitive definitions will improve clarity and readability.

Response 5: We have removed the repetitive word from the manuscript.

4. Response to Comments on the Quality of English Language

Point 1: The manuscript is mostly clear, but there are repeated instances of acronym definitions and occasional awkward phrasing. A language check for fluency, consistency, and conciseness is recommended.

Response 1: We have removed the manuscript's repeated acronym definitions and occasional awkward phrasing.

5. Additional clarifications

Response 1: We have modified our title in response to other reviewers' comments. The modified title is: "Land development 1985-2023 as a function of road improvement, employment, and mobility: A case study of Tennessee". 

Response to Reviewer 2 Comments

1. Summary

We sincerely thank you for your valuable feedback on our manuscript titled "Land development as a function of Road Improvement, Employment, and Mobility: A case study of Tennessee from 1985 to 2023". We appreciate your detailed insights and constructive suggestions, which have significantly improved the quality and clarity of our work. Below, we provide a point-by-point response to the reviewer’s comments.

2. Questions for General Evaluation

Reviewer’s Evaluation

Response and Revisions

Does the introduction provide sufficient background and include all relevant references?

Must be improved

We have improved our introduction with relevant references

Are all the cited references relevant to the research?

Must be improved

We have included the most recent relevant references.

Is the research design appropriate?

Must be improved

We have added a conceptual framework as suggested.

Are the methods adequately described?

Must be improved

We have added a methodological application flowchart as suggested.

Are the results clearly presented?

Must be improved

We have added a graphical representation of our results as suggested.

Are the conclusions supported by the results?

Must be improved

We have updated our conclusion to support our results.

3. Point-by-point response to Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Comments 1: What is the “spatial perspective” in the title? Where is it explained in the text?

Response 1: Thank you for your suggestion. We have removed the word “Spatial Perspective” from the title. We have modified our title. The modified title is: "Land development 1985-2023 as a function of road improvement, employment, and mobility: A case study of Tennessee".

Comments 2: Keywords: real estate, virtual estate, metaverse. It is not clear how these aspects are considered in the methodology.

Response 2: We appreciate this observation. We have refined the keywords to reflect the study’s focus better, changing them to:

land development; road improvement; urban growth modeling; urban development dynamics; employment density

Additionally, the Introduction and Discussion emphasize that the virtual estate and metaverse are included as conceptual extensions, rather than operational elements of the methodology. The physical land use model is a foundation to understand potential digital land growth dynamics.

Comments 3: What is the focus of the research? The occasional reference to the metaverse is confusing.

Response 3: Thank you. We have deleted the reference to metaverse and virtual land in order not to be confusing. Additionally, we clarified the primary focus on physical land development and positioned the metaverse discussion as a conceptual extension. This ensures the main research objectives are clear. The following statement has been added regarding the focus of the research:

“We study the relationship between infrastructure (road) development, employment, amount of travel, and land use change in the physical world. The definitions of what constitutes development, land density, employment density, road infrastructure improvement, urban, and rural are provided below.”

Comments 4: It will be important to highlight the effects of the problem by properly contextualizing it.

Response 4: The additional context has been provided by expanding the literature review, e.g., by citing recent works on land dynamics due to infrastructure changes such as road improvement, employment density effects. The following statements have been added.

“Diaconu et al. [11] observed that new highway infrastructure in Romania led to substantial land use change, replacing agricultural land with industrial and built-up areas. Similarly, Aïkous et al. [12] demonstrated that highway expansion in Montreal significantly increased the probability of industrial and commercial construction near a new access ramp.”

Comments 5: Such studies generally benefit from land use/land cover analysis using GIS and satellite data.

Response 5: Thank you. The following statements have been added to Section 2.2.3 Land Cover:

“Due to the nature of the research studying the land use changes around infrastructures, we utilized satellite-based land use land cover data and used GIS to extract the percent developed land.”

Comments 6: It’s unclear how virtual estate and metaverse are integrated into the methodology.

Response 6: We clarified the primary focus on physical land development and positioned the metaverse discussion as a conceptual extension. This ensures the main research objectives are clear. The following statement has been added regarding the focus of the research:

“We study the relationship between infrastructure (road) development, employment, amount of travel, and land use change in the physical world. The definitions of what constitutes development, land density, employment density, road infrastructure improvement, urban, and rural are provided below.”

Comments 7: Definitions for key terms (development density, employment density, etc.) are missing.

Response 7: We provided clear definitions for development density, employment density, VMT, and urban/rural definition. The following definitions have been added in the “Introduction” section:

“In this research, developed land represents altered landscape (vs undeveloped land represented by natural land uses) which has specific uses such as roads and other types of infrastructure. This land cover represents 4 categories including developed open space, developed low Intensity, developed medium Intensity, and developed high In-tensity (for the detailed definitions please refer to the USGS Annual National Land Cover Dataset [NLCD]). Growth of a developed land during 1985–2023 represents land use changes (also defined here as land development) during this period and it is measured in this study by a developed land density (which was computed by dividing the total developed area by the buffer area around each road improvement site) de-scribed in detail in the subsection on Land Cover.

Road infrastructure improvement is defined as enhanced traffic vehicle capacity via line widening, construction of a new road, and other improvements in the road infra-structure. In this study, road improvement (interchangeably referred to as the road improvement projects and the study sites) occurred at the sites represented by the segments in the road network that have experienced such improvement. 84 study sites (also referred to as road projects) in total were used in the study. Buffer areas were es-tablished around each road improvement site including 0.5 miles, one mile, two miles, and four miles to study the effect of the distance on changes in developed land.

Employment density measures economic activity which influences land use pat-terns through land conversion into developed (i.e., built-up areas) by stimulating job creation, and attracting investment. Employment density was calculated as the total number of jobs by summing all industrial categories divided by the respective buffer area around each road improvement site.

Mobility is proxied by the amount of travel. Increased mobility (i.e., travel demand) due to improvements in road infrastructure (e.g., by adding new roads) can ultimately induce changes in land use patterns. Here, mobility is measured by vehicle miles trav-eled (VMT) computed by using traffic data (i.e., Annual Average Daily Traffic (AADT) obtained from the Tennessee Traffic Information Management and Evaluation System (TN-TIMES) maintained by the Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT). Traffic data were linked with the study sites. The detailed description of the calculation is found in the subsection titled Traffic Data in Data and Data Imputation section.

Rural/urban classification has been used for the identification of the study site lo-cation. The rural/urban definitions come from the TN-TIMES classifying if the road is situated in a rural or urban area. A location within urbanized regions defines an area as urban and as rural otherwise.”

Comments 8: Tables are hard to read—use graphic elaborations.

Response 8: We incorporated boxplots and coefficient estimation graphs (Figures 4–14) to enhance readability and effectively convey statistical results.

Comments 9: Introduce a conceptual scheme and methodological flowchart.

Response 9: We introduced a conceptual framework (Figure 1) and a methodological flowchart (Figure 9).

Comments 10: Add detailed maps clarifying the relationship between density and buffer distances.

Response 10: Figure 2 shows the distribution of our study sites, Figure 7 represents the time series data of development land in Tennessee, and how employment density and development density changes across the buffer zones shown in Figures 6 and 8.

Comments 11: How does “smart cities” appear suddenly?

Response 11: We removed references to “smart cities”.

Comments 12: Results are not well discussed; conclusions should address infrastructure evolution effects.

Response 12: Thank you. As the discussion has been modified, we changed the results [detailed plots have been added, and also checked for multicollinearity and heteroskedasticity].

Comments 13: Conclusion needs rewriting—clarify the gap, novelty, spatial perspective, and metaverse role.

Response 13: We rewrote the Conclusion, clearly stating the literature gap, novelty, spatial perspective (buffer-based analysis), and conceptual connection to metaverse environments. Additionally, a brief section acknowledging and suggesting future research directions has been added in the Conclusions. The following brief section has been added:

“Future research directions should focus on the impact of virtual environments on real-world experiences to improve the quality of life for city residents and examine how metaverse-based principles can be used towards solutions of the problems inherent to urban infrastructure and governance systems of the physical world. One example of the application would be redefining urban landscapes to meet the needs of the emerging digital economy and infrastructure in the near future.”

Comments 14: Figure sequence is off, and quality is low.

Response 14: We corrected the figure sequence (Figures 1–14) and enhanced clarity. We are upgrading the resolution of all figures to 600 dpi for publication quality.

Comments 15: References do not cover all aspects (statistical indicators, infrastructure, employment effects).

Response 15: We added recent references on statistical modeling, infrastructure effects, employment density, induced demand, and metaverse planning (e.g., Zhao et al., 2024; Pourmohammadi et al., 2021; Diaconu et al., 2025; Aïkous et al., 2023; Huang et al., 2018).

4. Response to Comments on the Quality of English Language

Point 1: The English language is not the main problem. I think it is acceptable.

Response 1:

5. Additional clarifications

Response to Reviewer 1 Comments

1. Summary

We sincerely thank you for your valuable feedback on our manuscript titled "Land development 1985-2023 as a function of road improvement, employment, and mobility: A case study of Tennessee". We appreciate your detailed insights and constructive suggestions, which have significantly improved the quality and clarity of our work. Below, we provide a point-by-point response to the reviewer’s comments.

2. Questions for General Evaluation

Reviewer’s Evaluation

Response and Revisions

Does the introduction provide sufficient background and include all relevant references?

Can be improved

We have improved the introduction by adding recent case studies.

Are all the cited references relevant to the research?

Yes

Is the research design appropriate?

Yes

Are the methods adequately described?

Yes

Are the results clearly presented?

Yes

Are the conclusions supported by the results?

Yes

3. Point-by-point response to Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Comments 1: To further improve clarity and focus, the manuscript could still benefit from additional tightening in the introduction and discussion, where some passages related to virtual development remain loosely connected to the empirical content.

Response 1: Thank you for the suggestion. As suggested, we have further improved both the introduction and discussions to improve the loose connection with the empirical content. [the added part is highlighted in yellow].

Introduction: Despite significant differences between physical and digital land, we can think of similarity in terms of their use and valuation.  One can list parallels between physical and digital land as follows. Improvement of and better accessibility to physical land’s infrastructure including roads increases physical land’s property values. Similar principles apply to real estate in the metaverse. The value of digital land may increase with improvements in digital infrastructure such as virtual pathways, digital accessibility to services and the virtual connectivity between spaces in the metaverse. Further, various factors including demographics, economic growth, and infrastructure development all shape real estate investment in physical land, while the growth of the metaverse among other factors influence real estate investments in digital land. Understanding these parallels enables one to see how virtual real estate can grow and evolve.

Discussion: Both physical and digital land can be used for various purposes including land development. Understanding how land is developed in a real world helps understand how digital land and virtual real estate can grow. One way how physical land can be used and developed is by building various structures and providing and improving infrastructure, both activities are shaped by land use planning and zoning. Within the metaverse, digital land can be “developed” by constructing digital structures and creating virtual economies.

4. Response to Comments on the Quality of English Language

Point 1: The English is fine and does not require any improvement

Response 1:

5. Additional clarifications

Response to Reviewer 2 Comments

1. Summary

We sincerely thank you for your valuable feedback on our manuscript titled "Land development as a function of Road Improvement, Employment, and Mobility: A case study of Tennessee from 1985 to 2023". We appreciate your detailed insights and constructive suggestions, which have significantly improved the quality and clarity of our work. Below, we provide a point-by-point response to the reviewer’s comments.

2. Questions for General Evaluation

Reviewer’s Evaluation

Response and Revisions

Does the introduction provide sufficient background and include all relevant references?

Can be improved

Are all the cited references relevant to the research?

Can be improved

Is the research design appropriate?

Can be improved

Are the methods adequately described?

Can be improved

Are the results clearly presented?

Can be improved

Are the conclusions supported by the results?

Can be improved

3. Point-by-point response to Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Comments 1: Figure 1: Conceptual framework - is very poor, can be improved

Response 1: Thank you for your suggestion. Figure 1: Conceptual framework has been much improved.

4. Response to Comments on the Quality of English Language

Point 1: The English is fine and does not require any improvement.

Response 1:

5. Additional clarifications