PONE-D-22-22397The development of global creative city centers from a regional perspective: A case study of Milan’s creative industriesPLOS ONE

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PLOS ONE

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Comments to the Author

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Reviewer #1: Partly

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: I Don't Know

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Reviewer #1: No

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Reviewer #1: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

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Reviewer #1: Review on the paper entitled “The development of global creative city centers from a regional perspective: A case study of Milan’s creative industries”.

In this paper, the authors attempt to demonstrate the development of Milan’s creative industry and how the city is interconnected with some selected cities and what position it occupies in the network. In the post-industrial era characterizing developed countries worldwide, cities have tried to position themselves as global, national, and regional financial centers, homes to advanced producer service firms, and sites of creative industries. Some cities have become quite successful in establishing themselves as central cities of such activities. Milan serves a good example of being a center of creative industries. So, the research the authors conducted is up to date, and may attract the attention of the international scientific community. However, I have many concerns regarding the manuscript that the authors must carefully address to make the paper suitable for publication. In the followings, I am providing a detailed list for the authors about my observations:

1) First of all, I could not recognize the main goals of the research as they were not explicitly demonstrated. In other words, I miss the research questions from the manuscript.

2) The authors mention several times in the manuscript that it is Milan’s strategy to become “the world’s creative center” (see, for example, lines 222-223). Furthermore, they also assert that the creative industries have certain strategies (see, for example, lines 224-225). However, I found no reference about such strategies. So, where do these pieces of information come from? Does Milan really have a strategy to become “the world’s creative center”? How should the readers picture the strategy of the creative industries?

3) I think the title of the manuscript is not appropriately chosen. For me, the term “city center” refers to the inner urban area of a city rather than city’s position in a network. This term also pops up in the text. Please, check it.

4) The keywords should be rewritten. Because of their too general meaning, the following keywords would not increase the visibility of the paper: region, development characteristics, and influencing factors.

5) When I was first reading that the authors wanted to investigate Milan’s creative industry from a regional perspective, I thought that the geographical scope of the research would be Greater Milan or Lombardy. Then it turned out that the authors considered Europe as the region and also involved some world city as defined by GaWC in the analysis. Please, reconsider the use of the term “regional” in this context, because in Europe, it refers to a spatial unit under the national level.

6) This sentence should be rewritten (lines 92-94): “Thereafter, Hall and other scholars did not deny that the characteristics of flow, which began to appear in Western Europe.”

7) In line 95, this can be read: ‘…the research method based on the concept of "space of flow"…’ I am wondering what this research method could be (i.e., what is based on the concept of space of flow).

8) In line 119, the authors write that “the scope of this research is selected”, but it is not clear why and how the scope of the research is selected. Please, reconsider this argument.

9) In lines 119-122, the authors put forth that “According to the European Creative City Ranking [34], List of European Cities and Metropolitan Areas based on Population [35], and Ranking of European Metropolitan Areas based on GDP [36], 52 European cities were identified as the scope of this research.” I think the cities involved in the analysis were chosen by the authors rather than the European Creative City Ranking, etc. Please, rewrite the sentence.

10) In Table 1, the authors classified cities into different macro-regions of Europe, but it was not referred in the manuscript that on what basis they created the classification. Is there an international organization who use this classification or the authors arbitrary created those city classes?

11) The official name of the city “Hague” is “The Hague”. Please, check it.

12) In lines 136-148, the authors briefly describe the evolution of Milan’s fashion design industry as an example of creative industries. However, it is not clear which industries are considered as creative industries, especially in the case of Milan. We have only been informed that the fashion design industry belongs to the creative industries.

13) In line 144, the authors write that ‘…creative industries in Milan gradually expanded from the original "quadrilatero della moda" to the entire city and formed a cluster effect.’ I think it is not possible to form an “effect”. Please check the meaning of this expression.

14) In line 162, the authors put forth that they classified enterprises whether they were multinational or not. I am wondering where the data came from and how they found out which company were multinational.

15) As for the NUTS classification, I assume that some NUTS 3 regions cover a larger area than the city, the authors chose to analyze.

16) The authors involved many indicators in the study to investigate the 52 cities (see, Table 2). They picked “net migration rate” as an indicator and I assume that they considered this indicator positive if the ratio is high. I just want to add here, that this indicator does not necessarily reflect the tolerance of the local society, primarily not in Europe. Italy has witnessed the influx of migrant people recently, and Italian people have gradually lost tolerant towards migrants which has eventually resulted in the support of a populist anti-migration right-wing party who now governs Italy.

17) I think the number of registered vehicles has nothing to do with the cities’ infrastructure. It rather shows that people can afford to buy cars and might reflect the underdevelopment of the public transportation system.

18) In lines 215-216, the authors conclude that “Milan's creative industries pay more attention to the global level rather than the European regional level.” Based on the Table 3, this argument is not quite right. First, the authors selected some Alpha world cities from the GaWC list that construct strong links with cities across the word. This is the reason why they are marked as Alpha world cities. Second, as far as I see, there are more European cities among Milan’s most important connections than non-European world cities.

19) In line 235 (and several times later), the authors mention the term “Blue Banana” in the manuscript referring to a region of highly developed cities lying between England and Northern Italy. Please add a short description of the Blue Banana region to the manuscript. In addition, I would like to add that the term “Blue Banana” has been developed by a French journalist and it lacks scientific validation. The European Commission refers to Europe’s core region as the pentagon, one of which center is Milan.

20) Table 3 shows a six-level classification of cities, whereas the authors talk about a four-level classification several times in the manuscript (for example, in lines 265 and 303). Please, check it.

21) In line 315, the authors mention the term “export-oriented creative city”. I am not sure how an export-oriented creative city could be defined. Please provide a definition of this term.

22) In line 338, the authors write that there is a “correlation between Milan and research cities’ creative industries total interlocking…” Could you please specify what a “research city” is?

23) Data acquisition might have been a very interesting part of the paper (see, Figure 1); however, unfortunately, data are not included in the manuscript even though the authors asserted it.

24) As for Figure 2-2, I recommend the authors to change the expression “Main Cities in the World” to “Leading World Cities” or something like this.

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Reviewer #1: No

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The development of global creative centers from a regional perspective: A case study of Milan’s creative industries

PONE-D-22-22397R1

Dear Dr. Li,

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.

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Kind regards,

Xianzhong Cao

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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