A scaling investigation of urban form features in Latin America cities

Aureliano S. S. Paiva; Gervásio F. Santos; Caio P. Castro; Daniel A. Rodriguez; Usama Bilal; J. Firmino de Sousa Filho; Anderson Freitas; Felipe Montes; Iryna Dronova; Maurício L. Barreto; Roberto F. S. Andrade

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0293518

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionOctober 19, 2022
16 Feb 2023 Decision Letter - Gabriel Hoh Teck Ling, Editor PONE-D-22-28772A scaling investigation of urban form features on Latin America citiesPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Paiva, 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. ACADEMIC EDITOR: The reviewer(s) have recommended publication, but also suggest some revisions to your manuscript. The main issue in this paper is about the theoretical contribution of this paper although methodologically and empirically they are well done. There are other issues that are highlighted by each reviewer. Please submit your revised manuscript by Apr 02 2023 11:59PM. 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Please review our guidelines at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/materials-and-software-sharing#loc-sharing-code and ensure that your code is shared in a way that follows best practice and facilitates reproducibility and reuse. 3. Thank you for stating the following financial disclosure: The Salud Urbana en América Latina (SALURBAL)/Urban Health in Latin America project was funded by the Wellcome Trust. CIDACS has support from the Wellcome Trust UK (202912/B/16/Z)Moniz, Fundação Oswaldo Cruz, Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. Please state what role the funders took in the study. If the funders had no role, please state: "The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript." If this statement is not correct you must amend it as needed. Please include this amended Role of Funder statement in your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. 4. 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Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. 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: Yes ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 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: 1) The manuscript is a straightforward application of the urban scaling framework --- with insufficient argumentation as to why urban form should exhibit scaling behavior. Vague invocations of cities as complex systems---a claim which is not at all informative---do not constitute an argument as to why urban form should conform to a scaling relationship. 2) There is an established argument (derivation) as to why urban infrastructure should exhibit scaling behavior---see Lobo et al (2020) in Urban Studies. The manuscript exhibits ignorance of recent work in urban scaling. 3) The authors refer to a non existing controversy regarding the importance of urban delineation for investigating scaling: cities as social networks embedded in physical space should exhibit scaling; but not administratively defined city entities. 4) The connection of the presented results and urban planning is superficial and does not reflect how scaling results can inform urban policy. 5) The study of urban scaling over time is a topic of active work which the authors do not invoke; see, for example, https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rsif.2019.0846. Reviewer #2: The paper entitled ‘A Scaling Investigation of Urban Form Features of Latin America Cities’ examine the investigates the urban scaling behavior in Latin American cities. Particularly, it focuses on the relationship between the physical urban form features with the population size of the cities. In general, the paper contributes interesting findings from the Latin America region. The current manuscript has a few weaknesses. (1) At the first paragraph of page 3 mentioned about L3 level of analysis. But it does not include in the current study? Meanwhile, 5th Row of the second paragraph of the Descriptive Statistics section – ‘Table 3 shows the obtained results using the three L1 city definitions’ is not consistent with the label appears in Table 3 (L1AD, L2, L1UX). Further, the last paragraph of Descriptive Statistics section, L1AM is mentioned without any proper definition. Therefore, I think it would be great to adopt a set of clear and consistent labels for the different level of urban scaling analysis. Perhaps, using an additional figure or table could illustrate the definition ease readers to read and comprehend. (2) For Scaling Analysis section, the discussion of the result does not truly reflect what it appears from the Table 4 and 5. For an example, the following discussion does not exactly explain the Table 4 results. ‘We note, however, that the Administrative area score with L2 and L1AD definitions, as well as that for Total urban patches with L1AD were quite low (8%, 19%, and 16% respectively).’ ****** 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: Yes: Bor Tsong Teh ******** [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. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: PLOS ONE Reviewer Feedback.pdf https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0293518.r001
Revision 1
25 Apr 2023 Author Response 1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at. Response: The manuscript format was placed in the style required by the journal. 2. Please note that PLOS ONE has specific guidelines on code sharing for submissions in which author-generated code underpins the findings in the manuscript. In these cases, all author-generated code must be made available without restrictions upon publication of the work. Please review our guidelines at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/materials-and-software-sharing#loc-sharing-code and ensure that your code is shared in a way that follows best practice and facilitates reproducibility and reuse. Response: We added a Data availability topic. The scripts are now in a public repository on Github: https://github.com/sanchobuendia/Scaling-urban-form 3. Thank you for stating the following financial disclosure: The Salud Urbana en América Latina (SALURBAL)/Urban Health in Latin America project was funded by the Wellcome Trust. CIDACS has support from the Wellcome Trust UK (202912/B/16/Z)Moniz, Fundação Oswaldo Cruz, Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. Please state what role the funders took in the study. If the funders had no role, please state: "The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript." If this statement is not correct you must amend it as needed. Please include this amended Role of Funder statement in your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. Response: We have fixed this. This reads now: Funding The Salud Urbana en América Latina (SALURBAL)/Urban Health in Latin America project was funded by the Wellcome Trust [205177/Z/16/Z]. CIDACS has support from the Wellcome Trust UK (202912/B/16/Z) Instituto Gonçalo Moniz, Fundação Oswaldo Cruz, Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. UB was also supported by Office of the Director of the National Institutes of Health under award number DP5OD026429. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. 4. Thank you for stating the following in the Acknowledgments Section of your manuscript: The Salud Urbana en América Latina (SALURBAL)/Urban Health in Latin America project is funded by the Wellcome Trust [205177/Z/16/Z]. However, funding information should not appear in the Acknowledgments section or other areas of your manuscript. We will only publish funding information present in the Funding Statement section of the online submission form. Please remove any funding-related text from the manuscript and let us know how you would like to update your Funding Statement. Currently, your Funding Statement reads as follows: The Salud Urbana en América Latina (SALURBAL)/Urban Health in Latin America project was funded by the Wellcome Trust. CIDACS has support from the Wellcome Trust UK (202912/B/16/Z)Moniz, Fundação Oswaldo Cruz, Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. Please include your amended statements within your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. Response: This part has been deleted from the text. 5. We note that you have indicated that data from this study are available upon request. PLOS only allows data to be available upon request if there are legal or ethical restrictions on sharing data publicly. For more information on unacceptable data access restrictions, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-unacceptable-data-access-restrictions. In your revised cover letter, please address the following prompts: a) If there are ethical or legal restrictions on sharing a de-identified data set, please explain them in detail (e.g., data contain potentially sensitive information, data are owned by a third-party organization, etc.) and who has imposed them (e.g., an ethics committee). Please also provide contact information for a data access committee, ethics committee, or other institutional body to which data requests may be sent. Response: There are not ethical or legal restrictions b) If there are no restrictions, please upload the minimal anonymized data set necessary to replicate your study findings as either Supporting Information files or to a stable, public repository and provide us with the relevant URLs, DOIs, or accession numbers. For a list of acceptable repositories, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-recommended-repositories. Response: Data availability The SALURBAL project welcomes queries from anyone interested in learning more about its dataset and potential access to data. To learn more about SALURBAL’s dataset, visit https://drexel.edu/lac/ or contact the project at salurbal@drexel.edu. Furthermore, we are creating an open data repository to which we are adding the script, and data will be available at https://data.lacurbanhealth.org 6. Your ethics statement should only appear in the Methods section of your manuscript. If your ethics statement is written in any section besides the Methods, please move it to the Methods section and delete it from any other section. Please ensure that your ethics statement is included in your manuscript, as the ethics statement entered into the online submission form will not be published alongside your manuscript. Response: we have moved the ethical statement to the methods section. 7. We note that Figure 1 in your submission contain [map/satellite] images which may be copyrighted. All PLOS content is published under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which means that the manuscript, images, and Supporting Information files will be freely available online, and any third party is permitted to access, download, copy, distribute, and use these materials in any way, even commercially, with proper attribution. For these reasons, we cannot publish previously copyrighted maps or satellite images created using proprietary data, such as Google software (Google Maps, Street View, and Earth). For more information, see our copyright guidelines: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/licenses-and-copyright. Response: The figure was created in free software using non-copyrighted material. Therefore, it does not need copyright. We only include the name of the software in the text. Reviewer 1: Response: We thank the reviewer for the comments, which we understand to be directed mainly to the text in the first section Introduction. In the answers to the formulated questions we indicate the specific actions and changes that were made. 1) The manuscript is a straightforward application of the urban scaling framework --- with insufficient argumentation as to why urban form should exhibit scaling behavior. Vague invocations of cities as complex systems---a claim which is not at all informative---do not constitute an argument as to why urban form should conform to a scaling relationship. Response: The first paragraph now presents only a general landscape of the research on city growth phenomena, finalizing with the mention of the scaling analysis framework. The mention to theoretical support for scaling ideas was moved to the next paragraph. We hope this provides a better justification for this study. 2) There is an established argument (derivation) as to why urban infrastructure should exhibit scaling behavior---see Lobo et al (2020) in Urban Studies. The manuscript exhibits ignorance of recent work in urban scaling. Response: Thank you for the suggestions. The second paragraph has been rewritten, including now a substantial discussion on the theoretical support for scaling approaches. The corresponding references are introduced, including the specific item suggested above. We also included a comment on temporal scaling analysis and added three new references, including Lobo et al. 3) The authors refer to a non existing controversy regarding the importance of urban delineation for investigating scaling: cities as social networks embedded in physical space should exhibit scaling; but not administratively defined city entities. Response: Others (e.g., Cottineau, Hatna, Arcaute and Batty, 2017 –see https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0198971516300448 ) do suggest this is a controversy. It seems that there is disagreement on whether this is controversial. The mention to the indicated controversy was removed from paragraph 6. In the paragraph 9, when we describe the different city definitions available on the Salurbal data sets, we indicate we carried out scaling analysis based on cities urban extents as detected by satellite imagery as well as on admistrative definition. We briefly comment the expected results taking into account the reviewer’s remarks above. 4) The connection of the presented results and urban planning is superficial and does not reflect how scaling results can inform urban policy. Response: We seek to bring a more in-depth discussion on this subject in paragraph 4, indicating more clearly how the results of the scale analysis can help policy makers in making decisions to improve the quality of life of all populations and subgroups. 5) The study of urban scaling over time is a topic of active work which the authors do not invoke; see, for example, https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rsif.2019.0846. Response: We thank the reviewer for the suggestions. As indicated in our answer to query 2, we added a brief comment on this relevant aspect in the new paragraph 7. Reviewer 2: The paper entitled ‘A Scaling Investigation of Urban Form Features of Latin America Cities’ examine the investigates the urban scaling behavior in Latin American cities. Particularly, it focuses on the relationship between the physical urban form features with the population size of the cities. In general, the paper contributes interesting findings from the Latin America region. The current manuscript has a few weaknesses. (1) At the first paragraph of page 3 mentioned about L3 level of analysis. But it does not include in the current study? Meanwhile, 5th Row of the second paragraph of the Descriptive Statistics section – ‘Table 3 shows the obtained results using the three L1 city definitions’ is not consistent with the label appears in Table 3 (L1AD, L2, L1UX). Further, the last paragraph of Descriptive Statistics section, L1AM is mentioned without any proper definition. Therefore, I think it would be great to adopt a set of clear and consistent labels for the different level of urban scaling analysis. Perhaps, using an additional figure or table could illustrate the definition ease readers to read and comprehend. Response: These inconsistencies were identified and we included an explanation about L3, changed the description of Table 3, dropped the L1AM term and improved the description of levels. (2) For Scaling Analysis section, the discussion of the result does not truly reflect what it appears from the Table 4 and 5. For an example, the following discussion does not exactly explain the Table 4 results. ‘We note, however, that the Administrative area score with L2 and L1AD definitions, as well as that for Total urban patches with L1AD were quite low (8%, 19%, and 16% respectively).’ Response: We adjusted the interpretation of the results in Tables 4 and 5. First, the scaling parameters of Table 4 was analyzed in two separate paragraphs (second and third paragraphs of the section). Second, the interpretation of Table 5 also was developed in a new paragraph (sixth paragraph of section). Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0293518.r002
17 Jul 2023 Decision Letter - Gabriel Hoh Teck Ling, Editor PONE-D-22-28772R1A scaling investigation of urban form features in Latin America citiesPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Paiva, 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. ============================== ACADEMIC EDITOR: Thank you for the revised paper; however, there are some minor issues that need to be addressed before it can be further considered for publication. ============================== Please submit your revised manuscript by Aug 31 2023 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. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript: A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'. A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'. An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'. If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter. If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols. We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Gabriel Hoh Teck Ling, PhD Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] 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 #2: (No Response) ******** 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 #2: Yes ****** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 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 #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 #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 #2: In this version of the paper, I can see some improvements from the previous one. I would like to further highlights my comments as follow: (1) At the Method section, the terminology of L1 and L2 is mentioned in the discussion. However, there is no proper introduction and definition about them in the first place. (2) Table 3 contains L1AD density, L2 density and L1UX density. Is it necessary to display them? What is the purpose for having them? I do not find any discussion about these three items. (3) For Scaling Analysis section, the discussion of the result does not truly reflect what it appears from the Table 4 and 5. Do make sure the items (examples) below in Scaling Analysis section are consistent with information displayed in Table 4 and 5. - ‘The same occurs for for Number of urban patches in L1AD, with 15.8%’ - ‘The Large road variables has an exponent smaller than but very close to 1 in the L2 and L1UX levels.’ (4) The current Discussion section mainly focuses on the technical discussion – power scaling result, statistical result, and description result, as well as the result relation to other studies. Nonetheless, little discussion on the idea of urban planning is to explain the scaling behavior. Further, the current discussion misses to establish an important connection between the research findings and its implication for better urban planning in Latin America cities. ****** 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 #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. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: PLOS ONE Reviewer Feedback_TBT.pdf https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0293518.r003
Revision 2
2 Aug 2023 Author Response Dear reviewer, we thank you for all your comments and suggestions aimed at improving our article. Below are the answers. 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 #2: In this version of the paper, I can see some improvements from the previous one. I would like to further highlights my comments as follow: (1) At the Method section, the terminology of L1 and L2 is mentioned in the discussion. However, there is no proper introduction and definition about them in the first place. Response: Thanks for this remark. We removed any reference about L1 and L2 in the Method section. However, we note that the definition of “L1” and “L2” is available in the Data section together with the reference to the seminal project protocol article, as follows: “Being more specific, we restrain our study to urban agglomerations classified as “cities” at the L1 and L2 SALURBAL levels [36], which amounts to taking n=371 or 1436 at the L1 or L2 levels, respectively”. (Quistberg et al. Building a data platform for cross-country urban health studies: the SALURBAL study. Journal of urban health. 2019 Apr 15;96:311-37). (2) Table 3 contains L1AD density, L2 density and L1UX density. Is it necessary to display them? What is the purpose for having them? I do not find any discussion about these three items. Response: Thanks for this comment. We reformatted Table 3 to present only the results at the L1AD, L2 and L1UX level. The discussion of the items encompasses the paragraphs requested by the reviewer’s comment (4) on questions about urban planning. Please see specific answer to comment 4 below. (3) For Scaling Analysis section, the discussion of the result does not truly reflect what it appears from the Table 4 and 5. Do make sure the items (examples) below in Scaling Analysis section are consistent with information displayed in Table 4 and 5. - ‘The same occurs for Number of urban patches in L1AD, with 15.8%’ Thanks for highlighting this. Fixed for L2. “The same occurs for Number of urban patches in L2, with 15.8%.” - ‘The Large Road variables has an exponent smaller than but very close to 1 in the L2 and L1UX levels.’ Thanks for that. It is fixed: “The large road variable has an exponent β very close to 1 in the L1AD and L1UX levels”. (4) The current Discussion section mainly focuses on the technical discussion – power scaling result, statistical result, and description result, as well as the result relation to other studies. Nonetheless, little discussion on the idea of urban planning is to explain the scaling behavior. Further, the current discussion misses to establish an important connection between the research findings and its implication for better urban planning in Latin America cities. Response: Thanks for this comment. As mentioned, we inserted the following sentences in the discussion section: “The results found here will serve as a basis for comparison with further studies targeted to similar analyses for cities in other regions. We emphasize the importance of using appropriate city definitions in scaling analyses. Our study reveals that city definitions based on the actual extent of the urban area yield more accurate insights compared to administrative definitions. This highlights the need for urban planners in Latin America to consider the physical boundaries of urban areas when making decisions about resource allocation, spatial organization, and infrastructure development. By understanding the scaling behavior of built environment variables in relation to the actual urban extent, planners can create more effective strategies to address the specific needs and challenges of rapidly expanding cities. Furthermore, the study's discovery of a degree of universality in the relationship between population size and built environment variables across diverse Latin American cities has important implications for urban planning. Despite varying economic, historical, and cultural differences, the fundamental mechanisms that drive urban growth appear to exhibit common patterns. This finding suggests that certain strategies for city development may be applicable across different cities in the region, providing valuable guidance for planners seeking sustainable and efficient urbanization approaches.” Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to reviews.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0293518.r004
16 Oct 2023 Decision Letter - Gábor Vattay, Editor A scaling investigation of urban form features in Latin America cities PONE-D-22-28772R2 Dear Dr. Paiva, 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, Gábor Vattay, PhD, DSc 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 #2: All comments have been addressed Reviewer #3: (No Response) ******** 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 #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes ****** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes ****** 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 #2: Yes Reviewer #3: (No Response) ****** 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 #2: Yes Reviewer #3: (No Response) ****** 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 #2: (No Response) Reviewer #3: This is my first time reviewing the manuscript. In general, I think it is well done and the authors have mostly addressed the previous reviews sufficiently. I will encourage the authors to do three things below. Items 1 and 2 can be addressed in the discussion. Point 3 can be included in the supplemental. 1) The authors compared Brazil to other Latin American countries and this is justified because of differences in colonization history. However, the authors do not provide justification for lumping all of the LA countries together. I raise this because recent studies using global databases found mixed results among Latin American countries for the scaling of area and population (Ortman et al. 2020 PLoS one; Burger et al. 2022 Front Con Sci). I realize the authors are restricted to only a few countries with sufficient sample sizes to interpret the within country scaling exponent. This may be beyond the scope of this study, but can the authors justify (in methods or discussion) why they wouldn't expect variation among countries to driver their patterns, for example if Mexico was largely driving the relationship? 2) Interpretation of other variables may be enhanced by understanding how density varies across countries of different sizes. In your analysis and as you briefly summarize, it appears density increases with city size, yet this is in contrast to above studies of the region. I would like the authors to expand the discussion section on density in relation to the above studies and how it might influence (or be influenced by) the other urban attributes. This may be combined with a discussion of the above on how combining all LA countries may obscure among country variation. Related to the other reviewer's comments, this may be especially important for implications for urban planners that would likely work at country-level or even smaller scales. 3) The R2 values are variable among the urban attributes analyzed, which the author's do addressed. It would be useful to see the scatterplots of all of the variables analyzed in the supplemental so that the reader can see how the residual variation occurs. ****** 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 #2: No Reviewer #3: Yes: Joseph R Burger ******** https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0293518.r005
Formally Accepted
18 Oct 2023 Acceptance Letter - Gábor Vattay, Editor PONE-D-22-28772R2 A scaling investigation of urban form features in Latin America cities Dear Dr. Paiva: 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 Dr. Gábor Vattay Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0293518.r006

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