Review Reports

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors,

I find your manuscript relevant. You have approached an interesting topic related to the application of a methodology to highlight unique morphological traits of urban types in Kochi island that it would represent the support for the elaboration of a masterplan. I find your paper needs just several suggestions that you may find further on.

Keywords

Keywords should not be identical to some words in the title: e.g. tangible heritage, urban morphometrics, Kochi (IN)

Introduction

The short description of the structure of the paper  (Lines 127-135) must be made in accordance with the sequence of sections: introduction, methodology, results, etc. Firstly, you present the methodology (second section) and you do not briefly explain the subject of introduction.

Section 4: Dataset, primary, and contextual characters : this section should be included as a distinct subsection of methodology

Discussion

This section should be divided into several subsections:

-the explanation of the obtained results and correlation with economic evolution should be included in the subsection: significance of the results (or you can find a similar title)

-an external validation of the results should also be highlighted (by comparison with other similar studies with the interpretation of the similarities and differences)

-other subsection to be related to the importance of the study (originality of obtained results)

-limitations of the study and further research should be included in a distinct subsection.

Author Response

We thank the reviewer for finding our manuscript relevant and for the precious comments and suggestion. We follow with explanations on how we addressed the points raised:

• Since titles of papers are indexed, keywords should be different from the words used in the title, as correctly suggested by the reviewer. We thus removed keywords that were duplicates of words used in the title.
• We acknowledge that the structure of the paper presented at the end of the introduction might not have been fully clear. We thus amended it by clearly stating numbers of sections and respective content. This little paragraph is usually put at the end of the introduction to make clear the structure of the paper but do not include the introduction since it has already been presented.
• Since the aim is to have a replicable methodology, section 2 is more general as it explains (i.) how the UMM approach should be applied in the best-case scenario (i.e., with the full set of morphometric indicators) and (ii.) how to go from the morphometric profiles to the generation of figure-grounds. Section 4 relates to the dataset, primary, and contextual characters specifically used for analysing the city of Kochi. We thus believe that section 4 should not be moved in section 2 and follow the presentation of the case study in section 3.
• We believe that breaking the discussion in many subsections does not increase the readability of the paper. We thus did not subdivide section 6, but we re-formatted paragraphs in line with the suggestions made by the reviewer.   

Reviewer 2 Report

The focus of this paper is purely on urban planning with almost no focus on issues related to heritage. Accordingly, this topic is not related to the focus and audience of the Heritage Journal. It will be extremely odd to have this paper even after improvement to be  published in this Journal.

Author Response

The methodology presented in this paper, Urban MorphoMetrics (UMM), offers a systematic way to (i.) capture the morphological character and uniqueness of different city parts via the identification of urban types, (ii.) profile such urban types via a set of relevant morphometrics, and (iii.) generate figure-grounds aligned with their character and uniqueness. We believe that UMM is of paramount importance for the design in historical/heritage context as it permits to capture the morphological essence of places and generate figure-grounds respectful of this essence while not being replicas. More broadly, UMM allows to capture the “collective wisdom” embodied in historical/heritage urban types and shape an urban future in line with it. This not only means to understand and measure the heritage of the past, but also to build tomorrow’s heritage, that is urban areas to which future residents will attribute values of identity, attachment, and use, which largely stay unchanged through time.   

A further point: while the methodology works at the level of the entire city thus identifying also urban types that are not in historical/heritage context, the focus of this specific work is indeed on the urban types located in the historical area of Kochi (i.e., the Fort Kochi/Mattancherry peninsula). We showed how, by applying UMM, it is possible to achieve figure-grounds aligned with the character and uniqueness of historical urban types through different demonstrations both delivered by different designers over the same urban type and by the same designer over different urban types.  

By looking at previous publications in Heritage, we also noticed a very varied set of research topics and scales of approaches/case studies, from the chemical components for the preservation of monuments to the economic appreciation of cultural heritage in a specific city centre, from the management of archeological sites to the town plan analysis as a form of built heritage. We think this wide interdisciplinary perspective is what makes Heritage a rich and stimulating journal and we believe our contribution works in this direction. Finally, the focus of the special issue, i.e., urban morphology, generative design, tangible heritage, Space Syntax, to which the paper was submitted, is very much aligned with the content of our work. We thus believe that our paper is a valid contribution to the Journal in general and the special issue in particular. 

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The changes in the revised version are extremely superficial.

It is evident that the focus of this paper is not related to or closely related to heritage topics and it is purely on urban planning.  I personally confirm that this paper will have no added value to the Heritage Journal and it will be better to be published in Urban Planning related journals and be reviewed by specialized reviewers in this field.

Author Response

Since the reviewer did not provide useful feedback apart from a straight rejection, we only carried out the changes required by the other reviewer. We still believe that our work is a valid contribution to urban heritage planning for the reasons explained in our previous rebuttal, which have been included in the latest version of the manuscript.