Examining Municipal Procurement and Cooperation Networks in Smart Land Use Planning: The Yangtze River Delta Case

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This study systematically investigates the characteristics of municipal Smart Land Use Planning (SLUP) projects, their spatial distribution patterns, and intercity cooperation networks through an analysis of 3,689 government procurement contracts in China's Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration. The results demonstrate a pronounced uneven distribution of SLUP projects, with core cities exhibiting strong agglomeration effects while peripheral cities rely extensively on intercity collaborations to obtain technical support and professional services. These findings provide robust empirical evidence to inform SLUP policy implementation and promote coordinated regional development strategies.

The statement "we determined 11 as the optimal number of topics" requires clarification. What does that mean? How were the four main thematic groups derived?  Please provide: The defining keywords or distinguishing features for each group; The rationale for keeping the fourth group separate rather than merging it with others. In some cases, the fourth category could potentially be merged with other categories. What criteria did you use to maintain it as a distinct group?

I recommend that you include a detailed description of the procurement search and classification process. Currently, the methodology lacks sufficient documentation to validate these procedures.

L33-L34 “Technological application studies focuses on how to utilize remote sensing, big data, and artificial intelligence technologies to support land use decisions [5-7].” Deep learning references should be included here:

CUGUV: A Benchmark Dataset for Promoting Large-Scale Urban Village Mapping with Deep Learning Models;  Decoding (urban) form and function using spatially explicit deep learning

“For example, Huainan in Anhui Province sourced 98.7% of its SLUP projects from outside vendors, while most cities in the northern and western parts of the region had cross-regional procurement ratios more than 80%.” How do you identify and classify external investments in these projects? Specifically, are these outside investments coming from provincial-level sources, central government entities, or other external stakeholders?

Please clarify the defining elements of "SLUP cooperation networks." Are these primarily characterized by: Investment flows (e.g., funding amounts, financial transfers); Project collaborations (e.g., joint initiatives, shared contracts) or other operational criteria?

The methodology for calculating table 2 appears oversimplified. Please clarify: The theoretical or empirical basis for selecting these specific factors; Whether established references or precedents informed this approach.

The current discussion contains redundant content that repeats findings already presented in previous sections (e.g., Results). These duplications should be removed. The future work proposals currently appearing in the Conclusion section would be more appropriately placed in the Discussion section.

The current conclusion includes conceptual discussions and preliminary solutions that are more appropriate for the Discussion section. Please revise to focus exclusively on: a concise summary of the key empirical findings; the study's primary contributions.

Author Response

Thank you for your valuable suggestions. We have addressed your comments one by one and provide detailed response. Please see the attached response letter to reviewer. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Considerations of the article Examining Municipal Procurement and Cooperation Networks 2 in Smart Land Use Planning: The Yangtze River Delta Case

Abstract

The research problem, the objective, how the methodology that guided the research was developed and a brief report on the results were presented. I suggest also presenting the GAPs for future research, so that the reader can already check them in the abstract and obtain directions for new research. Another issue is to present the main problems found in the research, compared with the bibliographies used on the SLUP theme.

1. Introduction

Line 28 mentions the use of artificial intelligence algorithms to process data. It would be interesting to briefly report which algorithms these are, citing the references, as well as which of these algorithms are most used in the SLUP theme.

In line 29, GIS and big data are mentioned, both topics address a wide range of research and fundamentals. It would also be interesting to include references on the topics because they are large areas of research. In this case, focus on citing new references on GIS and big data applied in SLUP.

A positive point is that updated references were described (2025).

Digital Twin can also be briefly described.

Lines 32 and 33 - Existing studies on SLUP mainly focus on three aspects: technological applications, policy frameworks, and effectiveness assessment. Cite the references of these studies.

Lines 53 to 59 - the advantages and uses of the use of technologies by governments are presented. However, we also find problems generated by the use of these technologies by governments, for example, the lack of communication and integration between the various systems and at different levels of government. Cite some problems that can be generated by the adoption of technologies by governments.

Lines 64 to 67 - This spatial imbalance may affect the overall regional SLUP development level, thereby hindering regional sustainable development goals[3,4,16]. In this context, cooperation between cities within a region plays an important role in promoting regional SLUP development[27,28]. It may be interesting to incorporate these lines into the methodology as they may directly affect the results.

Lines 74 to 93 - City networks - Given the importance of City Networks, it would be interesting to create a table to present the contents of the cited lines. Cite the theme in one column and the references in another column. You can also create a column with a brief summary of the references cited in the text.

Lines 99 to 103 - highlight the research problem questions; one option is to put them in italics or even bold.

2. Materials and Methods

Lines 121 to 126 - Cite the bibliographic reference, are values and statistical data presented, and where were the values taken from?

Lines 146 and 147 - The website, www.ccgp-146, is offline. Please fix it, it is causing a page break. I suggest numbering the website references and including the addresses in the references section, also including the date the pages were accessed.

Lines 147 to 150 - If possible, create a folder on your drive with the research results. This question will allow you to verify how the data was pre-processed.

Lines 170 to 172 - Was any software such as Weka used for the inference or was it developed?

3. SLUP Procurement Project Characteristics and Their Spatial Distribution

Lines 253 to 257 - Create a descriptive table for the categories and topics used in section 3, it is confusing as presented.

4. Intercity Cooperation Networks and Influencing Factors in SLUP

Lines 254 to 356 - Gephi rendering with the OpenOrd layout algorithm was mentioned, mention in detail the software, algorithms used and the configurations made in these software to achieve the research results, in section 2. Materials and Methods.

Line 441 - I was unable to access the address of the API mentioned in lbs.amap.com, check.

Line 447 - general public budget revenue for the years 2018-2022. Why wasn't a more recent research carried out, at least covering the year 2024?

5. Discussion

Lines 531 to 534 - "Previous studies on SLUP primarily focused on technical applications, policy frameworks, and effectiveness assessment, with limited exploration from urban governance and regional cooperation network perspectives. This study addresses this research gap by systematically analyzing SLUP project characteristics, spatial distribution patterns, and influencing factors of intercity cooperation networks in the YRD region." It would be interesting to address this survey in the abstract and conclusion of the research.

Lines 582 to 594 - the recommendations proposed based on the results, given the importance and relevance of the research, would be better presented in a table. Color the tables suggested in the review.

In section 5, highlight the answers to the three questions proposed in section 1: the study focuses on three questions: (1) What are 99 the typological characteristics of SLUP government procurement projects in the YRD? (2) 100 How are government SLUP projects spatially distributed across different cities in the region? (3) What are the structural characteristics of the intercity SLUP cooperation network, 102 and which factors influence the formation of cooperative relationships?

6. Conclusions

Could you describe in the conclusion the main problems encountered in the application of the proposed theme, according to the results and the regions analyzed. Then, describe future work (lines 634 to 637).

Author Response

Thank you for your valuable suggestions. We have addressed your comments one by one and provide detailed response. Please see the attached response letter to reviewer. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The reviewed article addresses the interesting and topical issue of analysing the implementation of Smart Land Use Planning (SLUP) from the perspective of public procurement and municipal government networks. The research area is the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) in China. The aim of the research is to systematically analyse the types of SLUP projects, their spatial distribution and the factors influencing urban cooperation. A total of 3,689 SLUP procurement contracts in the urban agglomeration of the Yangtze River Delta in China were analysed as part of the research on the aforementioned issue.
The strength of the peer-reviewed article is its uniqueness and innovation by reaching out to real data relating to SLUP and using complex methods to analyse them (LDA topic modelling and SNA and MRQAP network analysis).
The only minor methodological caveat is that the article does not provide detailed indicators of the quality of fit of the LDA model (e.g. “coherence score”) for a selection of the number of themes - it would be worthwhile to supplement this.
The research results obtained are adequate for the research methods used. They bring new and relevant issues to the topic under study. The only challenge is the lack of a direct comparison of the results with other research on, for example, smart cities in Europe or North America - such a reference would strengthen the universality of the conclusions.
In conclusion, the reviewed article is very well written and represents a high scientific level. The article should be accepted for publication after minor revisions (mainly in the addition of information on the quality of the LDA model and in the slight expansion of the international discussion).

Author Response

Thank you for your valuable suggestions. We have addressed all your comments and provide detailed response. Please see the attached response letter to reviewer. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Everything is OK now.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I am grateful for the responses and corrections to the notes from the first review.

Abstract

Comments 1: The corrections suggested in the first review were addressed.

1. Introduction

Comments 2: The answer accepted, regarding ML and DL.

Comments 3: The corrections were addressed by inserting new references.

Comments 4: The corrections were addressed by inserting new references.

Comments 5: The corrections were addressed by inserting new references and text.

Comments 6: The corrections were addressed by inserting new texts in the suggested sections.

Comments 7: The corrections were addressed by inserting a new table.

Comments 8: The corrections were addressed by putting the text in bold.

Comments 9: The corrections were addressed by inserting the bibliographic reference.

Comments 10: The corrections were addressed by correcting the URL.

Comments 11: The answer accepted, regarding the confidentiality of information.

2. Materials and Methods

Comments 12: Corrections addressed, describing in the text the library and programming language used to perform the LDA topic analysis.

3. SLUP Procurement Project Characteristics and Their Spatial Distribution

Comments 13: Corrections addressed, inserting a new table, figure and texts.

Comments 14: Corrections addressed, presenting the configurations made in Gephi Software and in the OpenOrd algorithm.

Comments 15: Revisions accepted regarding the API used.

Comments 16: "We reviewed the relevant content in L151-L171", revision accepted, a detailed description of the process performed to extract government data was presented.

Comments 17: Corrections addressed, inserting a new table.

6. Conclusions

Comments 19: Corrections addressed, presenting the answers to the research questions.

Comments 20: Corrections addressed regarding limitations and future research.

The research is relevant and presents valuable results on the proposed topic. Congratulations!