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Energy Strategies, the Urban Dimension, and Spatial Planning

Energies 2020, 13(14), 3642; https://doi.org/10.3390/en13143642

by Karishma Asarpota and Vincent Nadin^*

Reviewer 1: Anonymous

Reviewer 2: Anonymous

Reviewer 3: Anonymous

Reviewer 4: Anonymous

Energies 2020, 13(14), 3642; https://doi.org/10.3390/en13143642

Submission received: 29 April 2020 / Revised: 12 June 2020 / Accepted: 6 July 2020 / Published: 15 July 2020

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Integrated Sustainable Urban Development: Governance and Management Strategies for Connecting Urban Systems)

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper is focused on an interesting and important topic and reveals gaps in energy and climate change mitigation policy. From this point of view it is an important paper, but it also has its shortcommings.

I would appreciate if the paper included an explicit definition of what is understood as a city. Is it delimited with its administrative borders or is it a city region? This is important in particular concerning the energy consumption which is particularly high in dispersed car-dependent suburban hinterlands.

Also explicit definition of „urban dimension“ including its discussion would be useful. There is a good definition on lines 74-76 but it is not completely followed and the paper is IMHO somewhat skewed to detail (i.e. towards architecture and technical details of buildings) with less attention to the broader scale (arrangement on the city-wide and regional scale, which – while mentioned in the review – was completely abandoned in the framework).

The paper discusses three main categories of the framework (transportation and accessibility, urban form and energy infrastructure), but drops the last in the framework. This results in rather strange categorizing of „Increasing renewable energy supply…“ and „Implementing district energy system…“ as a part of Urban Form category. While it is true that many improvements in energy infrastructure are not relevant from the point of view of urban form, other are quite relevant in both positive sense (district heating promotes compact and dense urban fabric) and negative sense (electric cars promote inefficient patterns and even can make some inefficient solutions more attractive (it is difficult to charge the car if you live in an appartment and park on the street while it is quite easy in a single-family house). The authors should consider using this category as well.

The paper is rather exploratory in its aims and this should result in richer framework (that will be pruned later, maybe as a part of discussion and conclusions) rather than a too narrow one. The creation of the framework should also be informed by substantially more sources (for the same reason). Missing topics include the topics in part 4.4 („other measures“, in particular regional planning and institutional dimension) or e.g. the relationship between location of housing and jobs. Some measures are also very broad – e.g. „promoting active travel“ can mean improving pedestrian infrastructure as described by the authors (the name of measure should reflect this), but it can also include the „city of short distances“ concept etc. Such measures could be divided into more simpler measures.

The paper touches the interaction between the main categories, but in a rather haphazard way, mostly only as a part of „cautionary notes“ on lines 386+. This should be improved, because the interaction of different main categories is where things become interesting (e.g. when transportation and urban form interact). In particular the „transport and accessibility“ part is mostly on borders between transport and urban form and the „urban form“ part is mostly on borders between urban form and energy infrastructure. The explicit work with border (or intercategory/multicategory) measures will likely prevent the mentioned problems with categorization of TOD in the transport and accessibility category despite its very strong urban form dimension. The note on lines 390-392 is confusing, because density is integral normative part of TOD and TOD without appropriate density arount transit stations is not TOD. The statement doubts the authors have good idea about the concept.

The authors might consider reviewing more planning documents of the examined cities as some topics missing in the „energy plan“ might be included in other plans.

Minor comments and typos

40: The statement that urban areas accounted for about two thirds of energy consumption but house only about half of the population is probably misleading, because of strong correlation of wealth (development) and both energy consumption and urbanisation. IMHO the effect will likely be much smaller with urban cores likely to be more efficient than the overall averages including suburban and exurban regions and associated lifestyles. I doubt the causality of urbanisation resulting in wealth and industrial production (55 – 58) as the relationships are at least mutual. I also miss source of the statement starting on line 40.

47: UNEP is United Nations Environment Programme, not United Nationals Environment Programme

90: „… relies more on personal transport...“ - from context this should either be „individual personal transport“ or „car transport“ (sometimes termed as privately owned vehicles (POVs)).

90-93: The part about the conversion of rural communities lacks more foundations. Is based on source 16 or is it a speculation of the author? What is the per-capita energy consumption in rural areas compared to dense urban areas? Is the shift problematic in all countries or just in some types of countries (developed, developing)? Is the shift something the cities are actively seeking („conversion of more rural communities“) or is it a „natural“ process? What will happen if the people stay in rural areas while their lives will change (i.e. will have to leave jobs in primary sectors and start working in distant urban areas) – will it be better?

120 „(…) technology and are (…)“ – probably a missing word

122 „initiatives (…) is“

129 „meaning that that there“ – should there really be double that?

149 „connecting of urban…“? – strange preposition from my POV, but I am not a native speaker

158 „that that“?

177 could you be more explicit about the „meta-review“ method?

180 „to the where“ – should „the“ be present in such a context?

181 „This resulted in two categories.“ Further in the paper you work with three categories – stick to either option.

187 „a long list of cities“ – how long?

189 „one of the global sustainability networks“ – which networks were considered?

265 – 275: The integration of land-use and transport is not only about compact and dense neighbourhoods, but also about the appropriate mix of functions (uses). If you consider a dense residential area „in the middle of nowhere“, the resulting traffic will be substantial as most people will have to commute to distant places to get a job. So while local walkability is important, it is not a silver bullet.

275 „less reduction in traffic congestions“ – meaning more severe congestion?

318 „to be able adress“ – missing „to“?

Table 1, measure 5: this measure is not clear, i don’t understand what “in the better way” means.

Table 1, measures 6 and 8 – if the authors will consider adding the “energy infrastructure” category, these measures are good candidates for inclusion

Table 1, measure 7: microclimate (in particular urban heat island effect) is not limited to immediate surrounding of buildings.

Table 1, measure 8: district heating systems have its cons as well, in particular losses in the distribution links.

Table 1, measure 10: what is “mechanical heating”?

Table 2, “Transport demand management” – I doubt electric cars and fuel efficiency are “transport demand management”.

Table 2 – measures in this table should have one-to-one relationship with measures in table 1 (even if the particular measure will not be included in any of the plan).

463 risk associate(d)

582 – “benchmarking and buildings” – should “and” really be there?

Author Response

Reviewer 1 response

Thank you for the positive comment and the recommendations for improvement below, including the many detailed editing corrections.

We have amended the text to make it clear that for the purpose of this study we consider the city as the administrative tier of the local government with principal competence for policy making on urban development and energy. That is because our study is examining public policy for the energy transition which is adopted by city governments. Thus, the administrative area varies from the functional city region depending on the country’s government structure. We accept that aspects of energy consumption in the jurisdiction are affected by factors outside it, including suburban development, and infrastructure and service provision in neighbouring jurisdictions.

The section which defines ‘urban dimension’ has been revised and we have sought to follow it more closely through the rest of the paper, and to ensure it is represented in the framework. It includes building, neighbourhood, city and region scales, and we explain that energy use in cities, and related interventions often reach across these scales, as in large buildings providing a mix of uses which can reduce travel at the city scale.

The paper discusses three main categories of the framework (transportation and accessibility, urban form and energy infrastructure), but drops the last in the framework. This results in rather strange categorizing of „Increasing renewable energy supply…“and „Implementing district energy system…“ as a part of Urban Form category. While it is true that many improvements in energy infrastructure are not relevant from the point of view of urban form, other are quite relevant in both positive sense (district heating promotes compact and dense urban fabric) and negative sense (electric cars promote inefficient patterns and even can make some inefficient solutions more attractive (it is difficult to charge the car if you live in an appartment and park on the street while it is quite easy in a single-family house). The authors should consider using this category as well.

Thank you for the recommendation. We agree. We have altered the framework to include ‘energy infrastructure which provides much more consistency through the paper. We have also explained that specific examples of energy use policies and interventions often involve more than one category.

We agree that the paper is ‘exploratory’ and have revised the introduction and the method to make this clearer. We have also included more sources to support the framework, but we do not want to claim that our search in the literature has been exhaustive. We have also revised the method section to make this clear that the paper is not a meta-review, this was a mistake in the submitted text.

On the suggestion that the framework should be informed by ‘substantially more sources’, our approach has been to use texts which themselves summarise a wide range of sources. We have made some additions but if we were to do more now, the result would be rather patchy as there are many sources related to the urban dimension of the energy transition. For the framework, we started with the lead given by the literature but we also worked inductively from the city energy strategies themselves.

The categories we have used in the framework are broad. We have taken our lead from the literature which tends to cluster policies and interventions in these ways. We have given some examples of the specific and more detailed practical measures that may be taken within each category. This includes the We have defined our understanding of ‘active travel’, and explained how this is understood in the city energy strategies.

We agree that the regional dimension and the institutional arrangements are important in the energy transition, including the ‘pattern of regional settlements’ (as mentioned in the text) or the regional spatial configuration as some call it. Regional development and planning are interrelated to the institutional arrangements as regional planning requires extensive collaboration across jurisdictions. We have mentioned this in the one city where it is mentioned, Oakland. We have also added a note to explain that it is the regional position of Oakland as part of a much wider interconnected urban region which makes this an issue there. We intend to take up the question of the institutional mechanisms and the energy transition particularly in relation to cross-sectoral and cross-border actions but this is a big subject that we feel is best treated in a separate paper.

On reflection, we agree that the treatment of interaction between the categories can be improved – and it is a central issue as mentioned above. Some categories are especially difficult to fit in one category, notably ToD. Transit-oriented development can mean many things We have emphasised in the text that ToD has many interrelated dimensions and is one of a number of areas of city policy that cuts across the categories, but we have followed the literature in emphasising the transport dimension, because it is the performance of ToD on travel and accessibility that makes transit-oriented development different to ‘transit-adjacent development. We have included to sources to support this (see e.g. Hale 2014).

The authors might consider reviewing more planning documents of the examined cities as some topics missing in the „energy plan“ might be included in other plans.

We agree that other planning documents will address some of the topics in energy planning that we have raised here, indeed we know that to be the case. The purpose of this paper is to examine specifically the energy strategies which are emerging from cities as a result of international and national agreements to make an energy transition for climate mitigation. We are currently reviewing other planning documents in the cities discussed here to extend our analysis which will be reported in another paper.

Minor comments and typos

Thank you for the comments on energy consumption in urban areas. We have amended and given more detail in this statement using evidence from the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Keto et al. 2014) This source is six years old but we believe the general argument is still valid. And we have deleted the reference to urbanisation and prosperity because it is not needed and would require some discussion to explain.

47: UNEP is United Nations Environment Programme, not United Nationals Environment Programme

Corrected.

Helpful comments. We have explained this point more fully and provided sources.

120 „(…) technology and are (…)“ – probably a missing word

Corrected. It now reads: ‘development and information and communications technology are not always well integrated with the energy domain’.

122 „initiatives (…) is“

Corrected.

129 „meaning that that there“ – should there really be double that?

Corrected.

149 „connecting of urban…“? – strange preposition from my POV, but I am not a native speaker

Yes, it was incorrect and should read ‘…legal provisions connecting urban spatial planning and energy policy…’. Corrected.

158 „that that“?

Corrected.

177 could you be more explicit about the „meta-review“ method?

We have revised the method section to explain that this was not a ‘meta-review’ because we do not claim to have identified all the literature in the field, or to have undertaken any quantitative analysis of the findings. This was not the intention of the review. Rather the paper uses an integrative literature review designed to refine and organise a framework of understanding and build a taxonomy of the ‘urban dimension’ to the energy transition (Synder 2019). This was then used as a framework to investigate of a selection of city energy strategies

Here is a summary of the revised text.

Our approach to the review was critical, broadly aiming to identify where there was agreement in the literature about the elements of urban structure and development that offer potential for the energy transition: aspects of the relationship between cities and energy use that are contested or controversial; and areas where there is uncertainty. In the event our review showed considerable agreement among authors although with varying emphases as explained in the following text.

In relation to the method, the paper reports on an explorative study that is not generalisable, but it is transferable to other settings where energy policies are being written, now and in the future, so as to inform those decisions taken there. Our approach to the design of a framework by literature review is an accepted approach (Synder 2019) and the reasons for the choice and organisation of categories is explained. The application and interpretation of the findings was logical and documented. It employed a simple and clear framework in a small number of cases which limited interpretation by the researchers. Overall, throughout this exploratory qualitative study, the paper seeks to encourage and provide a first step towards further research on the urban dimension and energy transition. It is also intended, like other qualitative research on public policy, to spur action in policy making communities so as to investigate and understand the potential to address the urban dimension in those places (Tierney and Clemes 2011).

Synder, H. (2019) Literature review as a research methodology: an overview and guidelines, Journal of Business Research, 104: 333-39.

Tierney, W. G. and Clemens, R. F. (2011) Qualitative research and public policy: the challenges of relevance and trustworthiness, in Smart, J. C. and Paulsen, M. B. Higher Education: Handbook of Theory and Research, Dordrecht: Springer, 57-84.

180 „to the where“ – should „the“ be present in such a context?

No. Corrected.

181 „This resulted in two categories.“ Further in the paper you work with three categories – stick to either option.

We have amended the approach so that we consistently use and refer to three categories.

187 „a long list of cities“ – how long?

We have added the names of the 11 cities investigated initially. Also, we have dropped the reference to ‘long’.

189 „one of the global sustainability networks“ – which networks were considered?

The section on method has been revised substantially and details about the network and its members given (C40 Cities).

Yes, quite. This section has been amended to address the other aspects of the relationship.

275 „less reduction in traffic congestions“ – meaning more severe congestion?

Corrected.

318 „to be able adress“ – missing „to“?

Corrected.

Table 1, measure 5: this measure is not clear, i don’t understand what “in the better way” means.

Tables have been reorganised and simplified. The wording has been editing to be clearer, including this one where ‘in a better way’ has been deleted.

Table 1, measures 6 and 8 – if the authors will consider adding the “energy infrastructure” category, these measures are good candidates for inclusion

Yes, agreed, we have incorporated these measures.

Table 1, measure 7: microclimate (in particular urban heat island effect) is not limited to immediate surrounding of buildings.

In the revised table, this is now measure 6 and has been amended to recognise this important point.

Table 1, measure 8: district heating systems have its cons as well, in particular losses in the distribution links.

We accept this point, and the existence of some drawbacks as well as advantages is probably true of most possible interventions on the energy transition. In the text we refer to studies that conclude that despite the ‘losses’ there are overall efficiency gains from district heating systems.

Table 1, measure 10: what is “mechanical heating”?

We meant systems that are not passive heating and cooling but really on significant external energy sources. The text has been amended.

Table 2, “Transport demand management” – I doubt electric cars and fuel efficiency are “transport demand management”.

Table 2 is now Table 3. We agree and we have amended the ‘spatial planning measure’ to reflect this point referring not to transport demand management, but to transport form and demand management. Interestingly we included the ‘switch to electric’ cars here because this is how it is argued in the city energy strategy. There is a lot of confusion about the potential and impacts of electric and hydrogen cell transport in cities alongside autonomous vehicles, but we do not have space to enter into that discussion here.

Table 2 – measures in this table should have one-to-one relationship with measures in table 1 (even if the particular measure will not be included in any of the plan).

Agreed, we have made this change to a one-to-one relationship, and it makes more sense.

463 risk associate(d)

Corrected.

582 – “benchmarking and buildings” – should “and” really be there?

Corrected.

Thank you.

Reviewer 2 Report

It is an interesting and meaningful piece of discussion bringing into energy strategies and spatial planning together. This article could be divided into two parts: the first contribution is meta-review of the literature on urban energy policy and urban form; the second one is the application of the framework of measures to 4 cities. Under serious global climate change, this discussion is rather important to help transform the city become energy efficient pattern. However, there are serious flaws need to be stated, in particular the research design part. It is hard for readers to follow up the logic of the authors. The followings are the questions for the authors:

Line 169. It would be great if there is any structure or framework could let the readers catch the overall logic in this study.
Line 177. The authors applied meta-review to collect and further analyze data from the literatures. Based upon my knowledge on meta-review, it is a rather rigorous procedure to collect, refine, analyze the related literatures. Therefore, it would be better if authors could elaborate relative information such as the selecting keywords, how many literatures have been included, and others.
Line 185. Although authors mentioned that the four cities are selected from the global sustainability networks. What is the representative of such selection? What is the representative of the four cities?
Line 209. The section of “spatial planning measures for the energy transition” is hard to recognize the correlation between the results and meta-review analysis. Why divide section four into “transport and accessibility”, “urban form”, “energy infrastructure”, and “other measures”?
Line 403. What is the overall framework proposed by the authors? It seems that section four is the illustration of the correlation between spatial planning and energy transition, and what is the research base for applying such results into evaluating the four cities?
Line 430. Table 2. The main categories include “aim of the strategy” and “common actions.” Why use these main categories? For the readers, it seems that it is a synthesis for energy transition in these four cities. However, this article should be a evaluation based upon the measures came from meta-review?

Author Response

Reviewer 2 response

Thank you for the positive comments about the importance of this topic, and for the recommendations for revision.

We have responded to your comments as much as possible. The major issue is related to the method where we have not given a accurate explanation to readers. We have corrected this with a clearer discussion of how we have approached this exploratory study and the overall logic, purpose and method reported in the paper. We note that most of the other comments stem from the lack of accuracy and clarity in explaining the method.

Line 169. It would be great if there is any structure or framework could let the readers catch the overall logic in this study.

We have added an explanation of the overall logic of the study as part of a substantial rewriting of the method section.

Line 177. The authors applied meta-review to collect and further analyze data from the literatures. Based upon my knowledge on meta-review, it is a rather rigorous procedure to collect, refine, analyze the related literatures. Therefore, it would be better if authors could elaborate relative information such as the selecting keywords, how many literatures have been included, and others.

In the original paper we were not accurate in our use of the term ‘meta-review’ and we have rewritten the method section to make this clear and to explain the purpose of the paper and the method of enquiry. We understand the requirements of meta-review or systematic review. In this case the research was undertaken through an integrated literature review. We also did not conduct a formal content analysis. We did not think that formal coding was needed for an assessment of four documents, although it will certainly be used in our follow up work which will address a much larger sample of strategies when they are completed.

Line 185. Although authors mentioned that the four cities are selected from the global sustainability networks. What is the representative of such selection? What is the representative of the four cities?

In the revised method section we have explained that the four cities were selected from a longer list of 10 cities that have been identified from the 96 members of the C40 network of cities that is pursuing ambitious targets for climate action.

We did not intend the selection to be a representative sample of cities, rather we were seeking examples of strategies that could provide useful understanding in this explorative study, especially in relation to energy policy and the urban dimension. At the time of the study, relatively few cities had made substantial progress on energy strategies that addressed the urban dimention, and the guidance on their preparation, informed by the pioneer cities, was not published until 2020.

Line 209. The section of “spatial planning measures for the energy transition” is hard to recognize the correlation between the results and meta-review analysis. Why divide section four into “transport and accessibility”, “urban form”, “energy infrastructure”, and “other measures”?

We have remade the figures and revised the text to explain that the categories follow the lead of the main texts in this field. The three main categories are clearly identified in previous reviews, but there are other factors which we included under the ‘other measures’ heading.

Line 403. What is the overall framework proposed by the authors? It seems that section four is the illustration of the correlation between spatial planning and energy transition, and what is the research base for applying such results into evaluating the four cities?

In the revised method section we have tried to explain the overall framework, and that the ‘research base’ is provided by the literature review.

Line 430. Table 2. The main categories include “aim of the strategy” and “common actions.” Why use these main categories? For the readers, it seems that it is a synthesis for energy transition in these four cities. However, this article should be a evaluation based upon the measures came from meta-review?

We have amended Table 2 so that it aligns with the categories of the framework, thereby providing consistency through the paper. We have provided an extra table on the general aims of the strategies as alternative broad approaches are mentioned in the literature, especially by Owens, and this helps to provide an orientation for what follows in the specific categories of measures. The additional comments on the ‘common actions’ have been incorporated into the text.

Reviewer 3 Report

This paper deals with the consideration of urban forms and transport in energy strategies for sustainable development.

Overall this paper consists in a large literature review leading to a conceptual framework and a benchmark of 4 case studies regarding this conceptual framework. From my point of view, this article contributes to a state of the art of current knowledge on the subject, but without any substantial contribution. As the authors say “There have been many contributions that might constitute an inventory of measures, both theoretical and practical”, the reason why their paper should be regarded as an improvement is not clear to me.

Some more specific comments are listed below:

Section 1.

The introduction is relatively short and remains at a very general level. The more specific question of the relationship between urban form, energy consumption and transport is not raised, although it is mentioned in the summary.

Lines 39-41: sources of the figures?
Lines 39-41: comparing the contribution of cities to CO2 emissions to population should be complemented by accounting for industries
Lines 41-42: the statement “Rapid urbanisation has increased prosperity and well-being of 41 people, especially in Asia” have to be supported by figures/sources

Section 2.

As section 4 consists of a literature review, section 2 has an uncertain role in the argumentation. Like the introduction, this part remains very general and does not make it possible to target the aspects dealt with afterwards.

Line 129: “meaning that that there”
Lines 152-153: the following sentence has to be further discussed “Some studies take a wider view, assembling evidence from numerous studies, but have a theoretical orientation, notably Owens”
Line 158: “to conclude that that”
Lines 166-167 the following statement has to be supported by sources “four cities well-known for their innovative approach to the energy transition.”

Section 3.

Section 3 is entitled "Method", but it does not contain any proper methodology in the formal sense in which I understand it.

Lines 170-171: “‘critical measures’ […] that are critical”
Lines 187-191: The justification of case studies has to be improved. Why only 4? Contemporary research on urban planning has showed that systematic analysis of planning document is made possible by computer-assisted text analysis (for example see Buhler, T., & Lethier, V. (2019). Analysing urban policy discourses using textometry : An application to French urban transport plans (2000–2015). Urban Studies, https://doi.org/10.1177/0042098019873824)
Lines 197-198: the authors say “We are interested here in putting together the experiences of four cities to reach some overall conclusions”, but, in my view, four cities are not enough to claim for “overall conclusions”.

Section 4.

Section 4 presents a broad review of the literature on the relationship between urban forms and energy, but it seems too often very general. The reader would like to learn more about the method used to produce Figures 1 and 2. Figure 3 reflects an unfinished conceptualization that juxtaposes three domains without making explicit their components and relationships.

Lines 251-253: ellipses are quite difficult to see
Line258-259: 24% of CO2 (https://www.iea.org/reports/tracking-transport-2019) and about 25% of GHG in EU (https://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/transport_en)
Lines 265-275: What about PT?
Line 344: The title is “Interrelatedness” but the diagram does not show or name any interrelation
Lines 370-376: this statement as to be supported by sources/references
Lines 388-397: the question of compactness, TOD or polycentric development has to be tackle earlier in the paper and not just mentioned in so called “Cautionary notes”.
The formatting of Table 1 should be improved
Table 1 gathers quite common/general/well known results especially for the dimensions of transport-accessibility and urban planning. Section “other measures” relies on only one reference.

Section 5.

Section 5 presents a qualitative analysis of the planning documents of four cities. This work would have benefited from being complemented by a systematic analysis using computer-assisted textual analysis.

The link between Table 1 (conceptual grid) and Table 2 (case studies) is not clear enough.

Section 6.

The final section (discussion and conclusion) reflects the too wide scope of the article and its too general purpose to be useful to the scientific community or the stakeholders.

Author Response

Reviewer 3 response

This paper deals with the consideration of urban forms and transport in energy strategies for sustainable development.

Thank you for saying that the paper contributes to the ‘state of the art’. This was indeed the main aim of the study and the paper. We have given more detail on what the ‘substantive contribution’ in a substantially revised section on the method.

Whilst we agree that there are many contributions providing inventories of measures, we have undertaken an integrated literature review to draw together the many measures into a simple categorisation of the ‘urban dimension’ of the energy transition. Furthermore, we have applied that categorisation to assess the coverage of the urban dimension in energy strategies. We have not found any other study which has assessed the energy strategies in this way, although the literature (and international policy guidance) promotes more attention to the urban dimension. The paper is intended for both academics in terms of providing encouragement for more research on this question. We intend also to spur policy makers to consider again the extent to which strategies effectively engage with the urban dimension which offers substantial potential for contributing to the energy transition.

Some more specific comments are listed below:

Section 1.

We have revised the introduction to clarify that this is an exploratory study. We agree that the introduction is short given the overall length of the paper, but it is meant to provide only ‘the big picture’ for the paper. The substantive issues are raised in the next section which we feel covers the relationship between the urban dimension including transport and energy consumption.

Lines 39-41: sources of the figures?

The sources for figures here are the International Energy Agency and the United national Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The text has been amended to clarify this.

Lines 39-41: comparing the contribution of cities to CO2 emissions to population should be complemented by accounting for industries.

We are not sure if we understand this point fully. Is it that cities are also the source of most wealth creation or industrial production? We have tried to clarify our point in the revised text that cities are important in the challenge to reduce emissions, and that there are opportunities (and challenges) arising from continued rapid urbanisation – and the production of energy strategies.

Lines 41-42: the statement “Rapid urbanisation has increased prosperity and well-being of 41 people, especially in Asia” have to be supported by figures/sources.

We have deleted this comment. It is not needed to make the general point and it would take some discussion to explain this fully.

Section 2.

We have amended the introduction to section 2 to explain its purpose more carefully. We feel it is needed to argue the case for the ‘urban dimension’ in energy and climate action policy because it is often overlooked.

Line 129: “meaning that that there”

Corrected.

Lines 152-153: the following sentence has to be further discussed “Some studies take a wider view, assembling evidence from numerous studies, but have a theoretical orientation, notably Owens”

We have amended this sentence since the reference to ‘theoretical orientation’ was rather misleading. The other studies also have a theoretical orientation. The difference is that Owens is a very broad review of the literature at that time.

Line 158: “to conclude that that”

Corrected

Lines 166-167 the following statement has to be supported by sources “four cities well-known for their innovative approach to the energy transition.”

This comment has been deleted. The following section has been comprehensively rewritten to explain the choice of the cities.

Section 3.

Section 3 is entitled "Method", but it does not contain any proper methodology in the formal sense in which I understand it.

We are aware of the difference between method and methodology. For this explorative paper we would argue that ‘method’ is more appropriate since the approach is simple and straightforward. However, we have added two references in the method section to justify our approach which is essentially to use a literature review to create a framework and then apply that in a reading of the documents.

Lines 170-171: “‘critical measures’ […] that are critical”

Amended. Thanks.

Lines 187-191: The justification of case studies has to be improved. Why only 4? Contemporary research on urban planning has showed that systematic analysis of planning document is made possible by computer-assisted text analysis (for example see Buhler, T., & Lethier, V. (2019). Analysing urban policy discourses using textometry : An application to French urban transport plans (2000–2015). Urban Studies, https://doi.org/10.1177/0042098019873824)

We have rewritten the method section to give a fuller account of the choice of four city strategies. Whilst computer assisted textual analysis is a powerful tool we can see no application for it in this particular paper. We are interested to make use of the method in a follow up study with a much larger number of strategies, when they are completed. Thank you for the source.

Lines 197-198: the authors say “We are interested here in putting together the experiences of four cities to reach some overall conclusions”, but, in my view, four cities are not enough to claim for “overall conclusions”.

Yes, true in this case, We have amended this section and deleted the sentence. In other studies we would argue that one case can be sufficient to reach conclusions, but here the depth of the study is not sufficient to reach generalisable conclusions. What we do say is that this explorative study has findings that are transferable because it provides useful information for others who wish to study in this field, but also is intended to be a spur to further research and action.

Section 4.

We have revised the figures completely, and the former figures 2 and 3 have been omitted. Figure 1 is now a straightforward summary of what the authors recommend as the main categories of measures related to the urban dimension that should be addressed in policy or the energy transition. Further details are given in Table 1 and the text which has been substantially revised. Figure 1 shows, for example, that all the authors consider aspects of transport and accessibility. The figure does not suggest relationships among the categories other than the overlap between authors/studies.

Lines 251-253: ellipses are quite difficult to see

Yes, agreed. We assume that the publishers will address this issue and will have conventions for presenation of ellipses. For now we have put them in sqare brackets.

Line258-259: 24% of CO2 (https://www.iea.org/reports/tracking-transport-2019) and about 25% of GHG in EU (https://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/transport_en)

Thank you for suggesting the more up-to-date sources. We have used them in the text.

Lines 265-275: What about PT?

Yes, a significant omission. We have amended the text.

Line 344: The title is “Interrelatedness” but the diagram does not show or name any interrelation

Correct. Figure 3 has been deleted from the paper.

Lines 370-376: this statement as to be supported by sources/references

References have been added to support the points made.

Lines 388-397: the question of compactness, TOD or polycentric development has to be tackle earlier in the paper and not just mentioned in so called “Cautionary notes”.

We have added an earlier reference to ToD as one of the main themes in relation to transport planning and energy.

The formatting of Table 1 should be improved

We have simplified and improved the table.

Table 1 gathers quite common/general/well known results especially for the dimensions of transport-accessibility and urban planning. Section “other measures” relies on only one reference.

The table has been reorganised and simplified and now follows the same organisation as Table 3. It was our intention to only include indicative texts in the table.

Section 5.

See the note above. We do not think that such an elaborate approach was called for with four examples and limited objectives for the paper. We will certainly be considering this as part of a formal content analysis in follow-up work when more relevant documents are ready.

The link between Table 1 (conceptual grid) and Table 2 (case studies) is not clear enough.

We have reworked the tables (table 2 is not table 3) to ensure that they follow consistent headings and we hope therefore, the connection is now obvious.

Section 6.

The final section (discussion and conclusion) reflects the too wide scope of the article and its too general purpose to be useful to the scientific community or the stakeholders.

We have clarified the contribution made by the paper, in particular, this is the first paper that we know of that addresses the ‘urban development and planning related content’ of energy strategies. This is a new policy instrument. The cities have very ambitious objectives for the energy transition and our paper points out that they are not fully addressing what could be a more substantial contribution from the urban dimension. We give clear recommendations that will interest pratitioners and we hope will stimulate further research.

Thank you.

Reviewer 4 Report

This is a useful and informative paper that presents some valuable findings around the interrelationship of urban form and energy policy and strategies globally. The authors identify a relevant gap in knowledge and adopt a review methodology to address the research questions.

There are many strengths to the paper, but the authors need to address some issues with their methodology, and how the results are presented as follows:

1) The use of tables/diagrams needs to be reviewed and some amendments made. In the current presentation format the tables, which are key to the paper's findings, are not readable. The authors need to consider how this analysis is visually presented so that the results can be understood. Similarly, the diagrams do not necessarily work in the format in the lit review - they need to be better articulate the link to the sources and indicate the analysis framework.

2) The structure of the paper could be reviewed to ensure that the introduction of the review of the four cities is addressed in the introduction. The text tends to confuse the literature review and results for these case studies, and a clearer differentiation of this would help to differentiate the key findings.

3) The discussion and conclusion need to be separated so that some clear and distinct findings are drawn out. The conclusion points seem to be focused on recommendations to a very broad audience- those responsible for energy strategies, city governments etc Could the paper better articulate how the following could be addressed: '

line 690 "It appears that more cooperation is required between parts of government, other agencies and civil society to ensure that the full range of experimentation and possible solutions are reflected in the energy strategies."

Author Response

Reviewer 4 response

Thank you for mentioning that that the paper will be useful. We agree that there is an important gap here both for academics and practitioners. We have clarified the contribution of the paper in relation to these relatively new and ambitious city energy strategies.

There are many strengths to the paper, but the authors need to address some issues with their methodology, and how the results are presented as follows:

Agreed. We have completely revised the figures and now just have one which we think gives a clearer summary of the main ideas in the reviewed papers. We have also revised the tables so we hope that they provide a readable summary of the main findings. A major revision is that the tables (Table 1 on the framework and Table 3 on the findings) now follow a consistent structure which gives a much clearer indication of the link between them. We have also revised the method section and other text to try to ensure that the overall logic of the paper is explained.

Agreed. We have revised the introduction (including better reference to the four cities) also mostly rewritten the method section to give an overview of the project and the paper and provide a better differentiation between the literature review and the findings from the cities.

We considered the possibility of separating the discussion and conclusion and re-read this section carefully. We have not separated them because we want to present some discussion of the findings, the conclusions and recommendations together so that help reinforce each other. (It also produces a. more concise text.)

We clarified the purpose in the introduction to mention that we directing our comments to practitioners and policy makers as well as other researchers. This type of exploratory paper may not have strong generalisable findings but the conclusions are very relevant to other settings where similar policy making is underway – and we seek to spur some deeper thinking and action on the contribution of the urban dimension to the energy transition.

Could the paper better articulate how the following could be addressed: '

We have added some commentary to suggest how the cites could improve cooperation, though this is a very wide topic worthy of its own paper.

Section 2 could have sub-headings

We have added sub-headings.

Cities and Low Carbon Transitions. Harriet Bulkeley, Vanessa Castán Broto, Mike Hodson & Simon Marvin (Eds). London, Routledge, 2011

We are familiar with these papers and have added the volume as suggested.

suggest this is a very limited indication of key references - considering this is a critical review of the literature

There could be many more references, but we find that there are quickly diminishing returns on citing more for the purposes of this paper. We have used sources that provide an overview of the contribution of urbanization to the energy transition. We explain in the text that many sources take a (useful) partial view, on particular topics or countries, for example.

suggest this section needs to create a rationale and an introduction to the choice of case study cities in the method

: Hong Kong Oakland, Oslo and Vancouver

The method section has been comprehensively rewritten to give a clearer rationale and description of our approach.

some indication of this analysis would be useful - a short table with the criteria and the long list of cities? indicating how the choice of the four cities was made.

See above. We have provided more detail on how the choice was made.

Suggest [change in heading]: Review of literature on spatial planning measures....

We have amended the heading.

Please introduce all seven studies very briefly to present a short overview.

The text only provides a short overview of the texts and we feel that to add another layer of overview would not help.

It is not explained how you arrived at these findings

This figure and the associated points have been deleted. We have elaborated our explanation of our approach which should meet this concern.

this diagram is not clear. Suggest a bar chart with frequency of term across the studies- the terms should be more clearly linked to the original source studies to present the analysis

Agreed. We have deleted two figures and replaced them with a simple chart which identifies the key components of the urban dimension in each study.

is a diagram required here? Can this be more clearly summarised at the end of section 4.3

Agreed. This diagram did not help to explain the text and we have deleted it.

suggest change to Limitations of the Study?

Agreed, we have followed this suggestion.

This objective needs to be included in the Introduction and a clearer rationale for the choice of cities included at an earlier stage in the paper.

Agreed. We have elaborated on this objective and the study of four cities in the introduction.

does this have a recommendation?

Yes, we have made explicit the recommendation for more collaboration between energy and climate policy making and urban development plans.

Thank you.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The changes reflect my previous comments and are are well explained in the comments. Some typos should still be corrected (e.g. intitutional (vs. institutional) on line 411), but these are rare.

Reviewer 2 Report

no comments

Reviewer 3 Report

Although the authors have made significant modifications to the text, my main reservations, concerning in particular the very broad field of analysis, the small number of case studies and the methodology, have not been sufficiently addressed.

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