Understanding Landscape Identity in the Context of Rapid Urban Change in China
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This is a worthwhile and interesting study, but some important details become flattened by the quantitative approach. Enriching the discussion and thinking about other (qualitative) ways of working with the data (perhaps in other papers) would make the study more useful to a broader audience.
My primary issue with this paper is that I don't get a very clear sense of the current discussion about landscape identity. I feel like section 2.0 is written for people who have already read the cited works; a little more detail for those who have not would make it much stronger. I also feel that at least a little attention to the larger discourse on cultural landscapes would enrich the approach significantly because this literature looks explicitly at the relationship between landscapes and cultural identities.
When it comes to coding your interviews, I feel like the identity aspect gets lost. Can you clarify what positive and negative associations have to do with identity? Once you have used this assessment framework, what does it imply in terms of action? Does it make an argument for the preservation of particular spaces, for example?
A few specific notes:
There is quite a bit of passive voice that is worth rewording. You start (line 23) with the statement "landscapes are viewed." By whom?It's a vague way to start.
line 77: you argue that contemporary China adopted western urban planning, can you support that? I would argue that contemporary China reflects distinctly Chinese urban planning, and that the change has to do with modernization, more so than westernization.
line 84 -- get rid of "need for"
line 84 what colonisation? explain
line 92 (figure 1) approximate dates of the two views?
line 95 "has been seen" by whom? These first two sentences are vague
line 119 spiritual is the wrong word -- the elements you list are all social
line 158-9 I find this sentence confusing. It would also be useful, probably at about this place in the ms, to at least reference the phenomenological literature.
Author Response
For Review 1:
Dear Professor
We greatly appreciate your efforts to carefully review the manuscript and the valuable suggestions offered. We made corresponding improvements to our manuscript.
- This is a worthwhile and interesting study, but some important details become flattened by the quantitative approach. Enriching the discussion and thinking about other (qualitative) ways of working with the data (perhaps in other papers) would make the study more useful to a broader audience.
Response: Thank you so much for your suggestion.
We tried to add some contents in the introduction, methodology and discussion sections that may help explain the background, details and significance of the research. The revised manuscript may have a more specific definition of landscape identity and a richer description of our onsite interview.
In the analysis part, we did not focus on the interview of each participant, but used a quantitative method (statistical analysis), which was considered that the purpose of our onsite work was to experiment and improve our conceptual framework. This may require more attention to the commonalities of the participants than to the special aspects of each interview. Although this was quite interesting to us in our field studies, we did not add it for the purpose of the article and for the sake of its length.
As for the qualitative methods used by other researchers, although we reviewed them in the preliminary work of the study, they are not closely related. However, this research focused on the definition of landscape identity and its 4 aspects. It might be a little confusing to go through the different methods while it is tough to explain them clearly in several sentences.
- My primary issue with this paper is that I don't get a very clear sense of the current discussion about landscape identity. I feel like section 2.0 is written for people who have already read the cited works; a little more detail for those who have not would make it much stronger. I also feel that at least a little attention to the larger discourse on cultural landscapes would enrich the approach significantly because this literature looks explicitly at the relationship between landscapes and cultural identities.
Response: Thank you for your suggestion.
We begin the 2nd section with a definition of landscape identity in our study so that the reader can directly understand what we are studying (Line 79-82). At the same time, we also add some fragment explanation, such as Line 26-28, Line 99-101.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Understanding Landscape Identity in the Context of
Rapid Urban Change in China
The topic of this paper, the loss of landscape identity in China due to the dynamics of colonization, modernization, and globalization, is extremely interesting and important.
My general comment is that that the paper is not sufficiently specific to the Chinese case.
Landscape identity must be more clearly tied to social and cultural changes that are specific to China.
Suggested changes and additions:
- Provide background to the Yantai case cited (line 99)—why was beach replaced? Can this redesign be linked to larger social/cultural/economic processes? The context is missing.
- Need more literature on the case of China. Most of the works cited are western. Little discussion of unique processes occurring in Chinese cities.
- Add more information on Yantai- history, urban form, demographics, urbanization processes.
- Add visual materials to the research site: plans, photographs.
Author Response
For Review 2:
Dear Professor
We highly appreciate your encouraging, critical and constructive comments on our manuscript. Your comments have been very thorough and useful in improving the manuscript. We made corresponding improvements to our manuscript.
- The topic of this paper, the loss of landscape identity in China due to the dynamics of colonization, modernization, and globalization, is extremely interesting and important.
Response: Thank you very much for your approval!!
- My general comment is that that the paper is not sufficiently specific to the Chinese case.
- Landscape identity must be more clearly tied to social and cultural changes that are specific to China.
Response: Thank you for your comments. One of the difficulties in discussing Chinese cities is that there is a distinct diversity of urban development, so the description of Chinese urban development in our previous manuscript was not very specific. To remedy this shortcoming, we have added some information about urban development in China in different sections, such as the introduction section (Line 33-37) and the discussion section (Line506-521); at the same time detailing the Yantai situation may be able to make sense (Line110-116).
- Suggested changes and additions:
- Provide background to the Yantai case cited (line 99)—why was beach replaced? Can this redesign be linked to larger social/cultural/economic processes? The context is missing.
Response: Thank you for your nice suggestion. More information on this example has been added (Line110-116).
- Need more literature on the case of China. Most of the works cited are western. Little discussion of unique processes occurring in Chinese cities.
Response: Thank you for your suggestion. In fact, we hoped to cite some research on the landscape identity of Chinese cities. Unfortunately, there is very little literature on the subject and it is also based on Western researches. There have also been studies of Chinese urban landscape style, place attachment, and the sense of place, and they differed from our focus.
- Add more information on Yantai- history, urban form, demographics, urbanization processes.
Response: Thank you for your comments. Since this section of background information requires a long length, which may interrupt the logic of our research narrative, we have placed it in Appendix A (Line559-588) and annotated it where appropriate (Line 329).
- Add visual materials to the research site: plans, photographs.
Response: Thank you for your nice suggestion. We have added some pictures to better explain the research site. Please see Line337-340and Line 375-376.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
