Exploring International Perspective on Factors Affecting Urban Socio-Ecological Sustainability by Green Space Planning

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is important research to determine the socio-ecological factors influencing Urban Green Space Planning in cities. The authors have conducted in-depth work.

It would be good to add the main research question before the aim and objectives of the research.

Figure 1 – it is not clear how this conceptual diagram developed – is it developed by the authors or based on the work of another scholar? This needs to be mentioned under the figure.

Lines 83 and 84 state that, drawing on the literature review, social sustainability factors such as accessibility, socialisation and others were identified. Later on in this manuscript, there is a methodology chapter. This literature review should be part of the methodology.  It would be good to include in the methodology section further details on what search terms were included for this review, which databases were searched, and what were the exclusion and inclusion criteria for selecting the literature from all the papers that appeared in the searches.

On lines 317 and 318, it is mentioned that ‘….. based on UGS and urban sustainability literature, 65 factors that may influence UGS planning were initially identified’. It is confusing whether this review and the review mentioned in Lines 83 and 84 are the same literature review or not. Then in Fig 2 The process to achieve UGS planning key socio-ecological affecting factors for urban sustainability is presented. A separate methodology flow chart detailing systematically various steps could be included. Whether or not ethics approval was sought to survey the experts is to be mentioned in the text. A summary of the questions in the survey should be added in the methodology section.

The authors have conducted extensive work in this research. Restructuring the article to present the work systematically must be completed to clarify the article to the readers.

I would like to see this article published and wish all the very best wishes to the authors. 

The English in this article requires some editing. 

Author Response

Dear reviewer, 

Thank you so much for taking the time to review my manuscript. I appreciate your kind feedback and comments to improve the paper.

I revised the manuscript according to your comments and highlighted the changes in the submitted file. 

I changed the literature review parts for the social and ecological factors to the method section and explained the methods more.

I added the main research question before the aim and objectives of the research.

Figure 1 – is developed by the authors.

Also, the social and ecological factors tables were based on the same literature that was provided in the method section.

I changed Figure 2 based on the objectives of the research. 

 

Many thanks.

 

With kind regards, 

Raziyeh Teimouri

 

 

 

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript fits perfectly into the general theme of the journal. The proposal is an interesting contribution so that the UGS are increasingly considered in urban planning, ensuring the social and environmental sustainability of cities and thus contributing to the greater well-being of the population. Although the methodological and/or instrumental contribution is not outstanding, the proposal clearly contributes to the consolidation of the theoretical bases in this subject and, at the same time, it can be extremely useful to support and improve professional practice in what regards USG planning and design.

The objective is clearly defined in the research, with the application of a solid methodology, widely used in various fields of research, and whose results, analyzed and statistically validated, have made it possible to identify the key factors for UGS planning to ensure social and ecological sustainability. in the city.

Perhaps the profile of the surveyed experts should be more precise, in terms of their origin (academic field vs. professional field of urban planning), which would help to justify and better understand the results finally obtained.

Author Response

Dear reviewer, 

Thank you so much for your time and your very kind and valuable feedback.

I will submit the full profile of the participants and the surveyed questionnaire with the final submission. In addition, I improved the method and literature review sections.

 

Many thanks.

 

With best regards, 

Raziyeh Teimouri

 

 

Reviewer 3 Report

The article presents a survey of 112 experts on the UGS and socio-ecological factors. However, this method did not allow the authors to achieve the primary aim, which was, according to them: "This study explores how UGS can improve urban sustainability from a socio-ecological perspective." In addition, the results are too general for planners to use. They lack in-depth analysis, supported by recent literature or additional empirical research. Perhaps in-depth interviews with some of these experts would have provided a broader and more accurate picture.

Other, major remarks:

The method is not described in detail. The authors did not write when they conducted the survey, what the responsiveness was. They did not include the text of the survey. It is not clear what regions of the world the experts were from, and this is important because they could have paid attention to the factors most important for their geographic-cultural zone.

Line 339: isn't it the case that above 0.7 the test is reliable?

The literature cited in Chapter 2 is generally older than 5 years - recent items are missing. Meanwhile, the topic of UGS and sustainability is very often published. In addition, from the authors' text about the state of the research, the factoids given in Tables 1 and 2 are not apparent.

The results lack in-depth analysis relating to empirics. The authors only operate with keywords from the survey. 

The discussion lacks a limitation of the research and, above all, a referencing of the results to specific factors in the already published literature.

On the basis of the shortcomings described above, I have doubts that the authors have proven what they state in their conclusions.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thank you so much for your time and your valuable feedback on improving the manuscript.

I revised the manuscript based on your comments and highlighted the changes in the final submission. 

I added some more recent publications to the literature review, as you recommended.

About the time of the survey, this manuscript is from my PhD thesis, and I conducted the survey in 2021. The results of the international experts' survey were the base of my PhD thesis to analyse the scio-ecological sustainability of the Adelaide Metropolitan Area. Also, I added information about the Ethics for this survey. In addition, I will submit a table including the regions of the participants and their academic centres as an appendix. Also, I added a study limitation to the discussion section.

Thank you again for your time and valuable comments.

 

Best regards, 

Raziyeh Teimouri

 

Reviewer 4 Report

This study identified key socio-ecological factors that affect the planning of sustainable UGS, which makes a useful contribution to literature. However, improvement and adequate explanation on the issues listed below point-by-point is expected to clear the way for acceptance.

 

Major:

1.      Introduction: (1) Lines 39-41 “The findings of this study can be generalised to all cities worldwide…” – One would argue that UGS planning can be circumstance-dependent or country-dependent, the authors did not explain why such a generalizable framework could add value, as well as what was the significance of this study; (2) Lines 42-47 – There is no need to introduce the structure of a journal article as such – this is not a thesis.

2.      Integrative social-ecological approach and urban sustainability by UGS: As this is a research article instead of a review, it would be better to see a shortened version of this section (e.g. focusing on the categorisation of social and ecological factors relevant to sustainable UGS planning) in the Methodology section.

3.      Methodology: (1) Lines 312-316: Too long for an opening of the Methodology section; (2) From the ‘First’ to the ‘Thrid’ are all about the categorisation of social and ecological factors, which should be combined into a subsection introducing a conceptual framework of potential social and ecological factors influencing the planning of sustainable UGS (e.g. a shortened version of the section 2); (3) Line 324: why a total of 112 experts were selected? How did the authors get this number and justify whether this sample size is statistically sufficient for this study? (4) Lines 324-333: it is unclear that what information was collected through the online survey, for example what data on personal characteristics were also collected and what purpose would they serve? (obviously, there are a few listed in the result section) – I would suggest to attach a copy of the questionnaire to this manuscript (e.g. as supplementary material); (5) Lines 342-343: “As shown in table 3, the reliability values for all social and ecological factors are between 0 and 1, showing a high degree of validation of the survey.” – this sentence should be in the result section; (6) Lines 346-348: the authors could directly introduce the main objectives and the corresponding statistical methods employed.

4.      Results: (1) Lines 388-390: the objective and what was performed should be in the method section; Lines 391-403: these should be listed as the caption of the tables, and should use abbreviations identical to what were listed in the tables; (2) Lines 411-412 “As shown in table 6, the significance of all domains is less than 0.5, indicating a high significance level between variables or factors in a group or domain” – I find these terms a little bit confusing here, it would be better to clearly state which as the p-value and which was significance level i.e. the alpha (α); same suggestion for Lines 425-426 (and elsewhere, if any).

5.      Discussion: This study is subject to several limitations, and the authors failed to identify them in the discussion. For example, 30% of the respondents had only 1-5 years’ experiences in UGS research, and over 47% had up to 10 years experiences in UGS research, how would this affect the reliability of the output as well as their implications? Was the data potentially biased towards any other groups that might also affect the outcome? For example, did the survey capture the potential gaps between experts from developed and developing countries?

 

Minor:

Lines 88 & 210: I would use 2.1, 2.2 for heading level 2. Same suggestion for lines 361, 370, and 387.

 

Line 385: Overlaid ‘ecological network’ and ‘protection’ in Figure 5.

 

Line 418: Unaligned ‘Socialisation’ in Table 6.

 

There are a few editing required to improve the manuscript before acceptance. Examples include (but are not limited to) the following points:

 

Line 188: I find it difficult to follow the title – should this be “Social factors affecting the planning of sustainable UGS”?

 

Line 302: Similarly, should this be “Ecological factors affecting the planning of sustainable UGS”?

 

Line 334: It is difficult to follow the meaning of the “To achieve key socio-ecological sustainability factor for UGS planning” in the yellow arrow in Figure 2, please rephrase.

Author Response

Dear reviewer, 

 

Thank you so much for your time and your valuable feedback on improving the manuscript. 

I revised the manuscripts based on your comments and highlighted the changes. 

With best regards, 

Raziyeh Teimouri

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors made most of the changes that I requested. I still think that this research could be improved with some more practical information but I understand that this is impossible. 

Author Response

Dear reviewer, 

I would like to express my sincere appreciation for taking the time to evaluate my manuscript and provide feedback and comments.

I revised the manuscript based on your comments in your first review. I believe by addressing your comments, the manuscript has been improved. I appreciate your kind help to improving the manuscript.

 

Best regards,

The corresponding author

 

 

Reviewer 4 Report

The authors have made improvement in accordance with the comments, however, there are a few more issues require further consideration before publication:

 

1.      The Introduction section is short and uninformative, which fails to ‘hook’ the audiences and give sufficient context for understanding the significance of this study. Half of the introduction section (14 out of 27 lines) were simply about the aims and objectives.

2.      The Methodology section also needs work: I appreciate that the authors have re-structured the second and third sections in accordance with the comments, however, the size of the method section still needs to be reduced – it currently took nine pages to explain the conceptual framework, survey and analysis approach, which is considerably ‘huge’ for a journal article to my eyes.

3.      The sections are mis-numbered (i.e. it should be “2. Methodology” after “1. Introduction”…).

4.      I’m not following what are in Lines 567-568?

 

Author Response

Dear reviewer, 

I would like to thank you very much for taking time to go through the manuscript for the second time. I

Please be informed that the authors addressed your comments:

• Regarding your first comment, as you recommended, I added some more lines for introduction based on the study aim and objective and highlighted them with blue. It strengthened the introduction section.
• Regarding your second comment, the authors are unable to reduce the methodology section. Most of the pages in the methodology section dedicated to Content Analysis. This part is one of the main parts of data and concept analysis in this study. In the first submission, the authors wrote the content analysis (including literature review about affecting factors for social and ecological sustainability) in a separate section before the methodology. But as you recommended, we moved them into the methodology section. We are aware that methodology section shouldn't be too long for the paper journals, but due to the importance of content analysis in this study, we have to leave it in the methodology section. But if you still interested in bringing Context Analysis separately, we will do that.
• Regarding your third comment. I revised the numbering. We appreciate your kind attention.
• Regarding your last comment. I removed those two lines. Sorry that I forgot to delete them. I copied it from the journal instruction to have pattern for editing the references.

I believe with addressing your comments the manuscript has been improved so much. I appreciate your kind time and attention.

 

With best regards, 

Corresponding author

 

Round 3

Reviewer 4 Report

Major issues:

1.      Introduction: I appreciate that the authors have added a few lines to strength this section, however, I find it remains unsatisfactory for publication:

(1) The introduction fails to give sufficient background details to all potential audiences, making it brief and ambiguous. For example, what is the definition of Urban Green Space (UGS) in this study? – there could be audience from other disciplines, and also different definitions of UGS subject to the context (there are many definitions for “urban” alone!). Also, what is the definitions of so-called “social sustainability” and “ecological sustainability”? I think with clear explanation and logic to link them together, the audiences would have a better picture of the significance of the research background and key questions.

(2) There are a few things could be done to improve the structure of the Introduction. For example, the authors could start a new paragraph from “Improving urban social and ecological…” (Line 31). In addition, the authors could add a few lines about “what we have known”, “what have been done” in the literature to strength the paragraph Lines 40-43 and make the currently-existing gaps more clear (hence the research questions).

2.      Methodology: I appreciate the authors’ explanation, but if possible, would still recommend a “shortened version” of this Content Analysis (as suggested in my previous comments). For example, in my narrow opinion, the very large Tables 1 and 2 are repeating information mostly explained in the subsections.

Minor issues:

3.      Line 106: (Authors, 2023) – incorrect citation?

4.      Line 277: Should “Ecological Network” organised in the same style following previous subsections such as “• Water Resources”?

A few other suggestions to be considered to improve the manuscript:

5.      Lines 417-419: Table 4 – (1) consider to use different symbols for different variables; (2) variable name in the caption should be identical to the one used in the table (i.e. “Standard deviation” should be “Std. Deviation”); (3) I feel that there is no need to explain the definitions of basic statistical terms here (i.e. “mean”, “standard deviation”), however authors can ignore this comment if they feel otherwise.

6.      Lines 428-431: Table 5 – same suggestions as above; no symbol found for “Mean Difference”; for “Sig.”, consider maybe replace “.000” with “<.001”.

7.      Lines 439-441: Table 6 – same suggestions as above; consider use symbol in same style (and place “a. t cannot be computed…” outside the table).

8.      Lines 450-453: Table 7 - same suggestions asabove; no symbol found for "Mean Difference"; for "Sig.", consider maybe replace ".000" with "<.001".    

Author Response

Dear Reviewer, 

I do appreciate your kind attention to the manuscript's improvement. The authors revised the manuscript based on your valuable comments. 

Please find the attached Responses file to your comments. 

With best regards,

The authors

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf