Sustainable Urban Development System Measurement Based on Dissipative Structure Theory, the Grey Entropy Method and Coupling Theory: A Case Study in Chengdu, China
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This is an interesting topic for the paper of interest to the Journal's readership. Whilst the authors contextualise the paper by discussing sustainable urban development, it would be beneficial to discuss in the introduction the emergence of systems theory in urban development, and what this offers the sustainability discourse. Fig 2 (p7) should appear earlier as this is a useful means to connecting wider discourse on sustainable urban development with methods.
At the moment, the paper outlines a model for calculating a measurement index system for each subsystem (as outlined in fig 2) and proceeds to calculate these, leadings to analysis using DST and GEM. Yet, there is no discussion about data sources, reliability of data, timeframes (the timeframes needed for meaningful analysis)...in short, all of the components needed to make this work impactful and to have broader relevance. The subsequent analysis of subsystems is too simplistic - descriptive - with data trends used to explain ad hoc developments in the city such as patent changes, leading to a final analysis of the orderliness of the city region. Overall, I find the analysis too simplistic and too general, and from which the conclusions made are too grand. Indeed I cannot see how the conclusions of the study (=that the model works) has any broader relevance to the readership.
Author Response
Manuscript ID: sustainability- 415695
Type of manuscript: Article
Title: Sustainable urban development system measurement based on Dissipative Structure Theory, and the Grey Entropy Method and Coupling Theory: A Case Study in Chengdu, China
Dear Editors and Reviewers:
Thank you for your letter and for the reviewers’ comments concerning our manuscript. Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our research. We have studied comments carefully and have made correction which we hope meet with approval.
The main corrections in the paper and the responds to the reviewer’s comments are marked in red and italic as following:
1. - Urban sustainable is not a concept per se. On the other hand, urban sustainable development is, such as sustainability or urban sustainability. I suggest the modification on the keywords.
Modification explanation: We are very sorry, and considering your suggestion, we have corrected the keywords.
Keywords: Urban sustainability; dissipative structure theory; grey entropy; coupling theory. (line 25-26 under revised manuscript).
2. - Line19 and 20: when you are saying “…the city became healthier …” you probably mean “sustainable”, as the indicators are for measuring sustainability and not urban health, which an entirely different matter, although related.
Modification explanation: We are very sorry, and we have corrected "…the city became healthier …" to "…the city became more sustainable …". (line 20-21 under revised manuscript)
3. - You have mentioned “coupling theory” in the abstract. However, “coupling theory” isn’t neither in the title, as the other’s methods”, neither has ever mentioned in the paper till lines 279 – 285. Based on the methods explanation I found the “coupling theory” a key method of the success of this model yet isn’t not even a key-word. At least, I suggest that a few words, highlighting coupling theory along with the grey entropy and dissipative theory, be written upfront.
Modification explanation: Thank you for your valuable suggestions and we have added "coupling theory" in the title, and written some words along with the grey entropy and dissipative theory.
Therefore, to overcome these problems, this paper uses grey relational entropy analysis to scientifically and objectively weight the sustainable urban development measurement indexes, dissipative structure theory to deeply explore the evolutionary sustainable urban development system trends and coupling theory to analyze the internal subsystem coordination. (line 99-103 under revised manuscript)
4. - Line 65: It may not be clear for all readers what you mean by “…multi-standard decision-making methods”. I guess, you could either explain what you mean by standard (linear or classic, or conventional, …), and or give some examples.
Modification explanation: We are very sorry for our incorrect writing "…multi-standard decision-making methods", and the correct one is "…multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) approach". (line 69 under revised manuscript)
5. - Line 170 – 171: the phrase “cities are complex giant systems…” it’s easily accepted, but when you add to that “…with five subsystems; society, the economy, the environment, resources, and technology”, that can arguable as many other “city scientists” can pinpoint other systems and or sub-systems (see Wilson, A. Complex Spatial Systems. The Modelling Foundations of Urban and Regional Analysis. Routledge, 2014. In https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=6i9IXtcAAAAJ&hl=pt-PT&oi=sra. Batty, M., The New Science of Cities. MIT Press, 2013. Batty, M. Inventing Future Cities. MIT Press, 2018. Portugali, J., Complexity, Cognition and the City. Springer, 2011., just to name a few but you could easily get much more). I would suggest you say, that FOR YOU and for this paper, cities are …, and this way it doesn’t sound like a universal statement.
Modification explanation: Thank you for your valuable suggestions and we have made correction according to your comments.
Cities are complex open giant composite systems, and for this paper, cities are five subsystems; society, the economy, the environment, resources, and technology. (line 177-178 under revised manuscript)
6. - Line 65: Line 188 – 189: you have written the following phrase, that I found quite relevant as it can narrow the methods that are more suitable for this type of analysis and in order to achieve this kind of objectives/answers: “…identify the main factors affecting the dissipative sustainable urban development system structure.” Therefore, my suggestion is that, by the relevance of that objective to the paper, it should be mentioned upfront in the introduction along with the others objectives point out.
Modification explanation: It is really true as Reviewer suggested that it should be mentioned upfront in the introduction along with the others objectives point out. And we have corrected it.
The measurement index system for each subsystem is constructed based on the actual urban development situation and the principles of quantity, totality, purposiveness, systematicity, and scientificity, the weights for the overall development level score and each subsystem development level score are determined based on the grey correlation coefficient calculated using the grey relational analysis method, and the index weights are calculated using grey entropy. (line 109-114 under revised manuscript)
7. - Line 65: Line 190: What it means SEERT?
Modification explanation: We were very sorry and had self-reflection for unclear expressions and we have revised it. SEERT is the first letter of society, economy, environment, resources and technology.
“…a measurement evaluation index system based on a Socio-Economic-Environmental-Resource-Technological（ SEERT）framework for the sustainable urban development system was established.” ( line 196-199 under revised manuscript)
8. - Index and indicators are mentioned through all the paper, but I’m not sure if you’re considering them to be same thing or different things. Some explanation would be an added value to the clarification of the paper as whole and for the concepts itself.
Modification explanation: We are very sorry to neglect to consider this problem that will be bothering readers, and we have corrected this.
As sustainable urban development assessments require a comprehensive, accurate approach and a scientific, rational index system, there has been significant academic research focused on index system construction and evaluation methods. ( line 42-44under revised manuscript)
Due to different domestic and foreign situations and the differences in urban development levels, the construction of the sustainable urban development measurement indexes for measurement index systems has varied significantly. ( line 45-47under revised manuscript)
…
9. - A discussion chapter regarding more in-depth analysis upon the bottom-up, data-driven methods versus linear and classic methods, and a top-down urban planning merit, would be appreciated.
Modification explanation: Thank you very much for your comments. This is very helpful for our further research. And we have made correction.
From Figure 7 it can be seen that the social subsystem sustainable development level continuously increased from 0.5002 to 0.9468, an average annual growth rate of 5.58%. In 2016, the social consumer good retail sales reached 574.236 million CNY, the average employee wages reached 74,408 yuan, and the year-end balance of urban and rural resident savings reached 108.08 billion CNY, and the level of urban infrastructure is also gradually improving. This is due to the Chengdu government's focus on comprehensively improving people's well-being, raising the income level of residents and increasing investment in infrastructure. The quality of life was improving, which boosted consumption power, and lay the foundation for further social subsystem development. ( line 374-384under revised manuscript)
From Figure 8, it can be seen that the economic subsystem development level was generally improving; however, there were varying degrees of decline during the assessment period. In 2012 and 2014, the system development level fluctuated, mainly because of a decrease in the GDP growth rate and the fiscal general public income in 2012, which resulted in lower economic vitality and a lower economic subsystem development level. However, since the 13th Five-Year Plan, Chengdu has focused on industrial restructuring and industrial transformation and upgrading. In 2016, the proportion of tertiary industry reached 53.11%, and the per capita GDP reached 76,960 CNY, resulting in the continuous improvement of the economic subsystem development level; In addition, with the implementation of a series of national strategies such as Chengdu-Chongqing city group and national central city, the government has increased investment in fixed assets and made efforts to build a western economic center, which has played a very important role in its economic development. It can be seen that the trend line has become more inclined from 2015 to 2016, indicating that the economic growth rate has increased, the overall economic subsystem development level was gradually increasing. ( line 388-401 under revised manuscript)
From Figure 10, it can be seen that the resource subsystem development speed was relatively slow, primarily because the per capita water electricity and gas use was increasing, which accelerated the resource consumption and reduced the resource sub system sustainable development level. In recent years, Chengdu has been accelerating industrial transformation and upgrading, deepening the elimination of backwardness and defusing excess capacity, accelerating the development of green and low-carbon industries, and strictly controlling the growth of high-energy-consuming industries, which plays an important role in reducing the energy consumption per unit of GDP, From 2014 to 2016, the energy consumption per unit of GDP(t/10^4 CNY) was reduced from 0.840 to 0.456, and the unit industrial added value energy consumption(t/10^4 CNY) was reduced from 1.385 to 0.826, which has promoted the development of resource subsystem to a certain extent. ( line 418-430 under revised manuscript)
Other Modification
(1) We have refined the description and expression of the text so that the reader can understand it more clearly.
(2) We combed the formula, corrected some clerical errors, and added two references.
(3) We describe the source of the data and add it as a reference.
(4) Other details are modified: spelling, typos, etc.
We tried our best to improve the manuscript and made some changes in the manuscript. These changes will not influence the content and framework of the paper.
We appreciate for Editors/Reviewers’ warm work earnestly, and hope that the correction will meet with approval.
Once again, thank you very much for your comments and suggestions.
Qunxi Gong
Sichuan University
2018-12-23
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Urban sustainable is not a concept per se. On the other hand, urban sustainable development is, such as sustainability or urban sustainability. I suggest the modification on the keywords.
Line19 and 20: when you are saying “…the city became healthier …” you probably mean “sustainable”, as the indicators are for measuring sustainability and not urban health, which an entirely different matter, although related.
You have mentioned “coupling theory” in the abstract. However, “coupling theory” isn’t neither in the title, as the other’s methods”, neither has ever mentioned in the paper till lines 279 – 285. Based on the methods explanation I found the “coupling theory” a key method of the success of this model yet isn’t not even a key-word. At least, I suggest that a few words, highlighting coupling theory along with the grey entropy and dissipative theory, be written upfront.
Line 65: It may not be clear for all readers what you mean by “…multi-standard decision-making methods”. I guess, you could either explain what you mean by standard (linear or classic, or conventional, …), and or give some examples.
Line 170 – 171: the phrase “cities are complex giant systems…” it’s easily accepted, but when you add to that “…with five subsystems; society, the economy, the environment, resources, and technology”, that can arguable as many other “city scientists” can pinpoint other systems and or sub-systems (see Wilson, A. Complex Spatial Systems. The Modelling Foundations of Urban and Regional Analysis. Routledge, 2014. In https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=6i9IXtcAAAAJ&hl=pt-PT&oi=sra. Batty, M., The New Science of Cities. MIT Press, 2013. Batty, M. Inventing Future Cities. MIT Press, 2018. Portugali, J., Complexity, Cognition and the City. Springer, 2011., just to name a few but you could easily get much more). I would suggest you say, that FOR YOU and for this paper, cities are …, and this way it doesn’t sound like a universal statement.
Line 188 – 189: you have written the following phrase, that I found quite relevant as it can narrow the methods that are more suitable for this type of analysis and in order to achieve this kind of objectives/answers: “…identify the main factors affecting the dissipative sustainable urban development system structure.” Therefore, my suggestion is that, by the relevance of that objective to the paper, it should be mentioned upfront in the introduction along with the others objectives point out.
Line 190: What it means SEERT?
Index and indicators are mentioned through all the paper, but I’m not sure if you’re considering them to be same thing or different things. Some explanation would be an added value to the clarification of the paper as whole and for the concepts itself.
A discussion chapter regarding more indepth analysis upon the bottom-up, data-driven methods versus linear and classic methods, and a top-down urban planning merit, would be appreciated.
Author Response
Manuscript ID: sustainability- 415695
Type of manuscript: Article
Title: Sustainable urban development system measurement based on Dissipative Structure Theory, and the Grey Entropy Method and Coupling Theory: A Case Study in Chengdu, China
Dear Editors and Reviewers:
Thank you for your letter and for the reviewers’ comments concerning our manuscript. Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our research. We have studied comments carefully and have made correction which we hope meet with approval.
The main corrections in the paper and the responds to the reviewer’s comments are marked in red and italic as following:
1. - I buy the conclusions of this paper without buying its math. This is one of those papers originating from China giving the reader an ivy dose of grey culture.
What I do not buy in the mathematical construct is that the authors submit us to an avalanche of formulae with hardly any proper justification and use the outcome to crunch numbers.
Let me be explicit.
First Eq 4 and eq 9 are conceptually not compatible. One is about the entropy, the other the change of entropy and the expressions is identical (except for a sign…). The first is used to compute the weight, the second to plot the changes of entropy.
In both cases the equation defining ksi(i) has the same mistake: in the denominator instead of sum(j) ksi(i) they should have put sum(j) ksi(ij). This could be a misprint if it were not repeated and reflecting a general sloppiness with respect to the math which shows elsewhere.
Modification explanation: We were very sorry and had self-reflection for this issue, and we have modified it.
(line 270 under revised manuscript)
(line 288 under revised manuscript)
And Regarding Eq 4 and eq 9, we refer to the practice of an article, "Evolution of Cultivated Land Security System in Jiangsu Province based on Information Entropy", we have added the relevant reference. (line 546 under revised manuscript)
2. - It shows in the definition of the entropy, or more exactly the normalization factor ln(m). In line 258, the 1/m is poorly justified. This is a tradition in that kind of analysis. In this article they mention Boltzmann. In his case there was an argument: equipartition of energy, i.e. maximum disorder meant all possibilities were equally probable.
Here the situation is different. 1/m means that the probability of any value was the same every year and they add to 1 over m years. In other they take random values every year. It is difficult to believe that even in a maximum disorder case, values of your indicators do not reflect the value of the year before, even if nothing has been made to introduce information in the system… The 1/m assumption is based on the notion that the sum over the probabilities of the different values of the indicators over the years is 1. It amounts to assume that the values of the indicators over the years are connected in such a way that they add up to cover the whole window of values. The values of indicators for different years are clearly based on the past year, this is not “information” put in the system, but the laws of physics without human intervention. Human intervention may bias the next reading of the indicator, but still will be affected by the reading the year before. Unlike the Boltzmann situation, those probabilities are not independent.
Modification explanation: Thank you very much for your comments. We have learned a lot from it. This is very helpful for our further research.
3. - Why not re-compute K for each case by generating randomly all the possible values of all the relevant variables according to what is known of their distribution. Surprise surprise, you will find a marginally different value each time. In most case the effect will be cosmetic on the results. In a sense this is only a normalization factor. It will not change trends.
Still the problem with this choice of universal normalization factor is that with a non-zero probability you will generate a number larger than one for the entropy Ej, which will translate into a negative number for dj. The change of sign can pollute the following results.
In any case, the effect on the results should not be dramatic. But there is an element of rigor, which is missing. When used sloppily grey correlation analysis tends to be like statistical tests, i.e. used as a set of recipes without much thinking. This kind of sloppiness (which has become traditional in those studies) adds a new shade of grey to the results…
There is a lot of manipulation of numbers going on before real numbers are introduced. The “grey correlation coefficient” cannot exceed 1 by definition, but it cannot be less than rho/(1+rho) also by definition. Hence in this study it cannot be less than 1/3. How does that bias the ultimate outcome? I simply do not know.
Despite the large amount of cloud and fog introduced sometimes needlessly in the analysis, I kind of buy the conclusions about the trends. The evidence that the improvement in the different aspects of sustainability over the years, and their correlation (evidence that this is policy driven) I think is sufficiently robust to withstand what I think are the shortcomings of the research methodology.
Modification explanation: Thank you very much for your comments. We have learned a lot from it. This is very helpful for our further research. We refer to the practice of "Application of Improved Entropy Method in Evaluation of Economic Result" about the value of K. (line 549 under revised manuscript)
And in this paper, "grey correlation coefficient" satisfies the definition of not less than 1/3 and not more than 1. In order to save the space, we have not put it into the paper
4. - The first sentence of the paper could be improved: “The world urbanization growth rate is expected to reach 60% by 2030 and 70% by 2050 [1] .” Are 60% and 70% growth rates or proportions of people living in cities?
Modification explanation: We were very sorry and had self-reflection for unclear expressions for this part, 60% and 70% are urbanization growth rates, not population growth rates. We have modified.
The world urbanization growth rate is expected to reach 60% by 2030 and 70% by 2050 [1], the increasing of urbanization growth rate has caused more and more residents to enter the city. (line 29-30 under revised manuscript)
4. - The word “ash entropy” is used in a title (line 244) and is never defined…
Modification explanation: We are very sorry for our incorrect writing " ash entropy ", and we have modified it.
Calculating the grey entropy value and grey entropy weight (line 256 under revised manuscript)
Other Modification
(1) We have refined the description and expression of the text so that the reader can understand it more clearly.
(2) We describe the source of the data and add it as a reference.
(3) We have slightly adjusted the title.
(4) We analyzed the conclusions based on the measurement data, which is rich in content.
(5) Other details are modified: spelling, typos, etc.
We tried our best to improve the manuscript and made some changes in the manuscript. These changes will not influence the content and framework of the paper.
We appreciate for Editors/Reviewers’ warm work earnestly, and hope that the correction will meet with approval.
Once again, thank you very much for your comments and suggestions.
Qunxi Gong
Sichuan University
2018-12-23
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
I buy the conclusions of this paper without buying its math. This is one of those papers originating from China giving the reader an ivy dose of grey culture.
What I do not buy in the mathematical construct is that the authors submit us to an avalanche of formulae with hardly any proper justification and use the outcome to crunch numbers.
Let me be explicit.
First Eq 4 and eq 9 are conceptually not compatible. One is about the entropy, the other the change of entropy and the expressions is identical (except for a sign…). The first is used to compute the weight, the second to plot the changes of entropy.
In both cases the equation defining ksi(i) has the same mistake: in the denominator instead of sum(j) ksi(i) they should have put sum(j) ksi(ij). This could be a misprint if it were not repeated and reflecting a general sloppiness with respect to the math which shows elsewhere.
It shows in the definition of the entropy, or more exactly the normalization factor ln(m). In line 258, the 1/m is poorly justified. This is a tradition in that kind of analysis. In this article they mention Boltzmann. In his case there was an argument: equipartition of energy, i.e. maximum disorder meant all possibilities were equally probable.
Here the situation is different. 1/m means that the probability of any value was the same every year and they add to 1 over m years. In other they take random values every year. It is difficult to believe that even in a maximum disorder case, values of your indicators do not reflect the value of the year before, even if nothing has been made to introduce information in the system… The 1/m assumption is based on the notion that the sum over the probabilities of the different values of the indicators over the years is 1. It amounts to assume that the values of the indicators over the years are connected in such a way that they add up to cover the whole window of values. The values of indicators for different years are clearly based on the past year, this is not “information” put in the system, but the laws of physics without human intervention. Human intervention may bias the next reading of the indicator, but still will be affected by the reading the year before. Unlike the Boltzmann situation, those probabilities are not independent.
Why not re-compute K for each case by generating randomly all the possible values of all the relevant variables according to what is known of their distribution. Surprise surprise, you will find a marginally different value each time. In most case the effect will be cosmetic on the results. In a sense this is only a normalization factor. It will not change trends.
Still the problem with this choice of universal normalization factor is that with a non-zero probability you will generate a number larger than one for the entropy Ej, which will translate into a negative number for dj. The change of sign can pollute the following results.
In any case, the effect on the results should not be dramatic. But there is an element of rigor, which is missing. When used sloppily grey correlation analysis tends to be like statistical tests, i.e. used as a set of recipes without much thinking. This kind of sloppiness (which has become traditional in those studies) adds a new shade of grey to the results…
There is a lot of manipulation of numbers going on before real numbers are introduced. The “grey correlation coefficient” cannot exceed 1 by definition, but it cannot be less than rho/(1+rho) also by definition. Hence in this study it cannot be less than 1/3. How does that bias the ultimate outcome? I simply do not know.
Despite the large amount of cloud and fog introduced sometimes needlessly in the analysis, I kind of buy the conclusions about the trends. The evidence that the improvement in the different aspects of sustainability over the years, and their correlation (evidence that this is policy driven) I think is sufficiently robust to withstand what I think are the shortcomings of the research methodology.
The first sentence of the paper could be improved: “The world urbanization growth rate is expected to reach 60% by 2030 and 70% by 2050 [1] .” Are 60% and 70% growth rates or proportions of people living in cities?
The word “ash entropy” is used in a title (line 244) and is never defined…
Apart from that I have no difficulty with this paper. The information it wants to convey deserves a better treatment because it is good and important for the debate on sustainability. I therefore hope that the authors will be nice enough to clean up their paper and let it become a real contribution to an important debate.
Author Response
Manuscript ID: sustainability- 415695
Type of manuscript: Article
Title: Sustainable urban development system measurement based on Dissipative Structure Theory, and the Grey Entropy Method and Coupling Theory: A Case Study in Chengdu, China
Dear Editors and Reviewers:
Thank you for your letter and for the reviewers’ comments concerning our manuscript. Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our research. We have studied comments carefully and have made correction which we hope meet with approval.
The main corrections in the paper and the responds to the reviewer’s comments are marked in red and italic as following:
1. -This is an interesting topic for the paper of interest to the Journal's readership. Whilst the authors contextualise the paper by discussing sustainable urban development, it would be beneficial to discuss in the introduction the emergence of systems theory in urban development, and what this offers the sustainability discourse. Fig 2 (p7) should appear earlier as this is a useful means to connecting wider discourse on sustainable urban development with methods.
Modification explanation: We have felt very regret that we have not been able to appear earlier Fig 2 (p7) with your valuable advice. But we have written some content about research methods in the introduction, which is a brief narrative of the Fig 2.
Therefore, to overcome these problems, this paper uses grey relational entropy analysis to scientifically and objectively weight the sustainable urban development measurement indexes, dissipative structure theory to deeply explore and analyze the evolutionary sustainable urban development system trends and coupling theory to analyze the internal subsystem coordination. (line 99-103 under revised manuscript)
2. -At the moment, the paper outlines a model for calculating a measurement index system for each subsystem (as outlined in fig 2) and proceeds to calculate these, leadings to analysis using DST and GEM. Yet, there is no discussion about data sources, reliability of data, timeframes (the timeframes needed for meaningful analysis)...in short, all of the components needed to make this work impactful and to have broader relevance.
Modification explanation: It is really true as Reviewer suggested that the data sources all of the components needed to make this work impactful and to have broader relevance. We have added the data sources and the timeframes.
Table 1. Measurement evaluation index system for the sustainable urban development system (line 200 under revised manuscript)
Considering that the earthquake in Sichuan in 2008, we selected the data from 2009 to 2016 for analysis to ensure that the time span is long enough. Based on requirements of our index system, the original data used for this case were extracted from China city statistical yearbooks (2010~2017)[31], Chengdu yearbooks (2010~2017) [32], Sichuan statistical yearbooks (2010~2017)[33], Chengdu statistical yearbooks (2010~2017)[34] , China Intellectual Property Statistics Report (2010~2017) [35]. Relevant data were extracted to obtain the index data, with the small number of missing values being processed through interpolation. (line 314-321 under revised manuscript)
3. - The subsequent analysis of subsystems is too simplistic - descriptive - with data trends used to explain ad hoc developments in the city such as patent changes, leading to a final analysis of the orderliness of the city region. Overall, I find the analysis too simplistic and too general, and from which the conclusions made are too grand. Indeed I cannot see how the conclusions of the study (=that the model works) has any broader relevance to the readership.
Modification explanation: Thank you very much for your comments. We have studied comments carefully and have made correction which we hope meet with approval.
From Figure 7 it can be seen that the social subsystem sustainable development level continuously increased from 0.5002 to 0.9468, an average annual growth rate of 5.58%. In 2016, the social consumer good retail sales reached 574.236 million CNY, the average employee wages reached 74,408 yuan, and the year-end balance of urban and rural resident savings reached 108.08 billion CNY, and the level of urban infrastructure is also gradually improving. This is due to the Chengdu government's focus on comprehensively improving people's well-being, raising the income level of residents and increasing investment in infrastructure. The quality of life was improving, which boosted consumption power, and lay the foundation for further social subsystem development. ( line 374-384 under revised manuscript)
From Figure 8, it can be seen that the economic subsystem development level was generally improving; however, there were varying degrees of decline during the assessment period. In 2012 and 2014, the system development level fluctuated, mainly because of a decrease in the GDP growth rate and the fiscal general public income in 2012, which resulted in lower economic vitality and a lower economic subsystem development level. However, since the 13th Five-Year Plan, Chengdu has focused on industrial restructuring and industrial transformation and upgrading. In 2016, the proportion of tertiary industry reached 53.11%, and the per capita GDP reached 76,960 CNY, resulting in the continuous improvement of the economic subsystem development level; In addition, with the implementation of a series of national strategies such as Chengdu-Chongqing city group and national central city, the government has increased investment in fixed assets and made efforts to build a western economic center, which has played a very important role in its economic development. It can be seen that the trend line has become more inclined from 2015 to 2016, indicating that the economic growth rate has increased, the overall economic subsystem development level was gradually increasing. ( line 388-401 under revised manuscript)
From Figure 10, it can be seen that the resource subsystem development speed was relatively slow, primarily because the per capita water electricity and gas use was increasing, which accelerated the resource consumption and reduced the resource sub system sustainable development level. In recent years, Chengdu has been accelerating industrial transformation and upgrading, deepening the elimination of backwardness and defusing excess capacity, accelerating the development of green and low-carbon industries, and strictly controlling the growth of high-energy-consuming industries, which plays an important role in reducing the energy consumption per unit of GDP, From 2014 to 2016, the energy consumption per unit of GDP(t/10^4 CNY) was reduced from 0.840 to 0.456, and the unit industrial added value energy consumption(t/10^4 CNY) was reduced from 1.385 to 0.826, which has promoted the development of resource subsystem to a certain extent. ( line 418-430 under revised manuscript)
Other Modification
(1) We have refined the description and expression of the text so that the reader can understand it more clearly.
(2) We combed the formula, corrected some clerical errors, and added two references.
(3) We have slightly adjusted the title.
(4) Other details are modified: spelling, typos, etc.
We tried our best to improve the manuscript and made some changes in the manuscript. These changes will not influence the content and framework of the paper.
We appreciate for Editors/Reviewers’ warm work earnestly, and hope that the correction will meet with approval.
Once again, thank you very much for your comments and suggestions.
Qunxi Gong
Sichuan University
2018-12-23
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
I appreciate that you have take in consideration all the comments and suggestions and I would like to give you a word of encouraging for further research on the subject, by saying that I have appreciate reading the paper.
Author Response
Manuscript ID: sustainability- 415695
Type of manuscript: Article
Title: Sustainable urban development system measurement based on Dissipative Structure Theory, and the Grey Entropy Method and Coupling Theory: A Case Study in Chengdu, China
Dear Editors and Reviewers:
Thank you for your letter and for the reviewers’ comments concerning our manuscript. Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our research. We have studied comments carefully and have made correction which we hope meet with approval.
The main corrections in the paper and the responds to the reviewer’s comments are marked in red and italic as following:
1. - I appreciate that you have take in consideration all the comments and suggestions and I would like to give you a word of encouraging for further research on the subject, by saying that I have appreciate reading the paper..
Modification explanation: Thank you very much for your encouragement, we will continue our further research.
Other Modification
(1) We have added two references
We tried our best to improve the manuscript and made some changes in the manuscript. These changes will not influence the content and framework of the paper.
We appreciate for Editors/Reviewers’ warm work earnestly, and hope that the correction will meet with approval.
Once again, thank you very much for your comments and suggestions.
Qunxi Gong
Sichuan University
2018-12-31
Reviewer 3 Report
I do not buy the explanation for the normalization factor to be 1/ln(m).
When there are m samples in a completely disordered state, pij=1/m. This is true but here the system is NOT in completely disordered state. M refers to different years and what takes place one year affects the next year. This may not be the case for ref. 36 dealing with agriculture, but this definitely is the case for most of the indicators (social, economic, etc…) used in this paper.
Since this (what I think is a) mistake does not have the potential to alter the conclusions significantly, I will not make an additional fuss. But the argument used here to justify pij = 1/m is simply incorrect in the context of this paper. Whereas it is correct in different contexts.
Author Response
Manuscript ID: sustainability- 415695
Type of manuscript: Article
Title: Sustainable urban development system measurement based on Dissipative Structure Theory, and the Grey Entropy Method and Coupling Theory: A Case Study in Chengdu, China
Dear Editors and Reviewers:
Thank you for your letter and for the reviewers’ comments concerning our manuscript. Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our research. We have studied comments carefully and have made correction which we hope meet with approval.
The main corrections in the paper and the responds to the reviewer’s comments are marked in red and italic as following:
1. - I do not buy the explanation for the normalization factor to be 1/ln(m).
When there are m samples in a completely disordered state, pij=1/m. This is true but here the system is NOT in completely disordered state. M refers to different years and what takes place one year affects the next year. This may not be the case for ref. 36 dealing with agriculture, but this definitely is the case for most of the indicators (social, economic, etc…) used in this paper.
Since this (what I think is a) mistake does not have the potential to alter the conclusions significantly, I will not make an additional fuss. But the argument used here to justify pij = 1/m is simply incorrect in the context of this paper. Whereas it is correct in different contexts.
Modification explanation: We were very sorry and had consulted a lot of literature for the normalization factor to be 1/ln(m). In particular, two articles on sustainable urban development come from Weimin Zhang. These two articles have received a high citation rate. We refer to these two articles for proper revision.
where: ,j = 1,2,…,n. is a constant, and the value is related to the number of system samples. When the system information is completely disordered, the order degree is 0, the entropy value is the largest, and . When there are samples in a completely disordered state, ,at this time, , ,[36,37,38]. (line 269-273 under revised manuscript).
We tried our best to improve the manuscript and made some changes in the manuscript. These changes will not influence the content and framework of the paper.
We appreciate for Editors/Reviewers’ warm work earnestly, and hope that the correction will meet with approval.
Once again, thank you very much for your comments and suggestions.
Qunxi Gong
Sichuan University
2018-12-31
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
