Black Rock City versus Manhattan: An economist’s view

John Yinger

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0244331

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionJuly 18, 2020
11 Sep 2020 Decision Letter - Nicolas Chiabaut, Editor PONE-D-20-22306 Black Rock City versus Manhattan: An Economist's View PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Yinger, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. Please submit your revised manuscript by Oct 26 2020 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. 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Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Partly ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: N/A Reviewer #2: N/A ****** 3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 5. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: The article is well-written. It uses the concrete example of Black Rock City to concretize a new consideration, building upon previous work (e.g., by Anas and Moses). The analysis is sound. Some of it refers to derivations in other works, which is fine. The overall strategy is to demonstrate certain facts using simulation about the difference among aggregates for cities with different street layouts, mainly holding constant either the radius or total population. Comments: Section 5 could do with more discussion of the situation in which a planner would be faced with choosing such a design. Black Rock City is a somewhat unusual example in this regard, being rebuilt every year. Mid-century, of course, there were a good number of cities designed and built mostly from scratch, but there are also some in China and India being built today, and the Charter City advocates envision new ones mainly in Latin America and Africa. It would be illustrative to provide examples of real cities, or parties of real cities, that roughly evoke each class of ideal city. There is a lot of notation. It would be helpful to have a table of notation, for the reader. "The objective of this paper is to compare the areas, populations, and average population densities of Circle City, Grid City, and Diag City." I would add something along the lines of "and the maximum distance from the city center to hold a given population." I'm not sure what would be best, but the scope ought to include that the comparisons hold something constant. There are many statements in the paper that could be illuminated by saying what is being held constant as the cities are being compared. I think there should be some commentary about the generality of the results. We are proceeding mainly via simulation for a few parameter. This isn't to say it's necessary to prove everything. Reviewer #2: This paper analyzes and compares different city network structures from an economic perspective. While the topic is sound, the paper lacks a clear description of the contributions. The author should better explain the need for each type of the analysis made. In its current form, the paper is difficult to follow. It seems that many parts are build upon the previous studies, thus contributions need to be clearly defined. Since this is an economic analysis, it is useful to incorporate a comprehensive analysis of the transportation cost. There are several studies in the literature comparing different city structures from a public transport perspective that the author might consider incorporating in the paper. ****** 6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review?** For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #1: No Reviewer #2: No [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0244331.r001
Revision 1
24 Oct 2020 Author Response John Yinger Black Rock City versus Manhattan: An Economist’s View Resubmission to Plos One Responses (in Italics) to Reviewers’ Comments Reviewer #1: The article is well-written. It uses the concrete example of Black Rock City to concretize a new consideration, building upon previous work (e.g., by Anas and Moses). The analysis is sound. Some of it refers to derivations in other works, which is fine. The overall strategy is to demonstrate certain facts using simulation about the difference among aggregates for cities with different street layouts, mainly holding constant either the radius or total population. Comments: Section 5 could do with more discussion of the situation in which a planner would be faced with choosing such a design. Black Rock City is a somewhat unusual example in this regard, being rebuilt every year. Mid-century, of course, there were a good number of cities designed and built mostly from scratch, but there are also some in China and India being built today, and the Charter City advocates envision new ones mainly in Latin America and Africa. It would be illustrative to provide examples of real cities, or parties of real cities, that roughly evoke each class of ideal city. These two comments are very helpful. The first version of the paper contained just a few examples of actual cities with the three analyzed street networks. After an extensive internet search, I was able to identify quite a few more examples of all three street network designs. These examples are provided at the beginning of section 5, “Lessons for City Design.” (See page 17.) In the previous version, a few examples were mentioned in earlier sections. All these examples (except Black Rock City, Manhattan, and Washington, D.C.) have now been moved to page 17. There is a lot of notation. It would be helpful to have a table of notation, for the reader. I have added a table of notation to the appendix. This table could be moved to the text if that seems preferable. "The objective of this paper is to compare the areas, populations, and average population densities of Circle City, Grid City, and Diag City." I would add something along the lines of "and the maximum distance from the city center to hold a given population." I'm not sure what would be best, but the scope ought to include that the comparisons hold something constant. There are many statements in the paper that could be illuminated by saying what is being held constant as the cities are being compared. This is a helpful suggestion. I added two panels to Table 1 indicating the city sizes needed to reach selected city populations. A discussion of the results appears on page 14. I think there should be some commentary about the generality of the results. We are proceeding mainly via simulation for a few parameter. This isn't to say it's necessary to prove everything. The revised version of the paper adds more emphasis to the point that the simulation results depend on the selected parameters—but the comparisons across cities do not. The two new panels in Table 1 and the revisions to the footnote in Table 1 are directly on this point. Reviewer #2: This paper analyzes and compares different city network structures from an economic perspective. While the topic is sound, the paper lacks a clear description of the contributions. The author should better explain the need for each type of the analysis made. In its current form, the paper is difficult to follow. It seems that many parts are build upon the previous studies, thus contributions need to be clearly defined. Since this is an economic analysis, it is useful to incorporate a comprehensive analysis of the transportation cost. There are several studies in the literature comparing different city structures from a public transport perspective that the author might consider incorporating in the paper. I agree with the reviewer that the paper should do a better job highlighting its contributions. I have added a comment on Diag City (p. 12) to explain its contribution. I have retained the statements in “lessons” that explain the paper’s other contributions. This paragraph from the reviewer also indicates that the paper does not contain a comprehensive analysis of transportation costs. This is a helpful comment, because it points out a key part of the paper that needs clarification. The street/artery framework is quite general. It includes many types of public transportation systems. Page 5 now has a sentence with examples of possible arteries. More complex transportation networks cannot be analyzed with the type of urban model in this paper. I have added a brief comment on a key example of these issues—commuting time—on page 2. I hope these revisions make the paper clearer. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Plos One Response to Reviews.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0244331.r002
8 Dec 2020 Decision Letter - Nicolas Chiabaut, Editor Black Rock City versus Manhattan: An Economist's View PONE-D-20-22306R1 Dear Dr. Yinger, We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements. Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication. An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org. Kind regards, Nicolas Chiabaut, Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation. Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed ******** 2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Partly ****** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: N/A Reviewer #2: N/A ****** 4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 6. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: In the response the author raised the idea of moving the table of notation into the paper, rather than the appendix. I think that would be wise. Another thing I don't think I commented on the first draft: the paper uses curly brackets for function arguments. While this does avoid ambiguity with order-of-operations, I think it is a fairly unusual choice and is confusing. So I would just use parentheses or square brackets. Other than these two comments I am satisfied. Reviewer #2: The author has successfully addressed all of my comments. I do not have any further question at this point. ****** 7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #1: Yes:** Lewis Lehe Reviewer #2: No https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0244331.r003
Formally Accepted
16 Dec 2020 Acceptance Letter - Nicolas Chiabaut, Editor PONE-D-20-22306R1 Black Rock City versus Manhattan: An Economist's View Dear Dr. Yinger: I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org. If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Pr. Nicolas Chiabaut Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0244331.r004

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