The Methodology for Supporting Land Use Management in Collective Housing towards Achieving Energy Efficiency: A Case Study of New Belgrade, Serbia

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

In my opinion, the article is very interesting, but its major disadvantage is the lack of an international context. The problem presented in the article covers the issues of smart city, especially in the context of real estate. Let the authors recommend you a few positions from which you can pick on, of course this is not all in this topic:

-Alonso, W. Location and Land Use; Harward University Press: Cambridge, MA, USA, 1964.

-Butryn, K.; Jasińska, E.; Kovalyshyn, O.; Preweda, E. Sustainable Formation of Urban Development on the Example of the Primary Real Estate Market in Krakow. In Proceedings of the First International Scientific Conference on Ecological and Environmental Engineering 2018, Cracow, Poland, 26–29 June 2018.

-Preweda, E.; Jasińska, E. Organization of the Building Space of Developments and Its Impact on Residential Housing Prices. Sustainability 2020, 12, 7622.

-Diaz-Balteiro, L.; González-Pachón, J.; Romero, C. Measuring systems sustainability with multi-criteria methods: A critical review. Eur. J. Oper. Res. 2017, 258

-Hanus, P.; Pęska-Siwik, A.a.; Benduch, P.; Szewczyk, R. Comprehensive Assessment of the Quality of Spatial Data in Records of Parcel Boundaries. Measurement 2020, 158, 107665.

-Amato, F.; Maimone, B.; Martellozzo, F.; Nolè, G.; Murgante, B. The Effects of Urban Policies on the Development of Urban Areas. Sustainability 2016, 8, 297.

-Viesturs, J.; Auziņš, A. Real Estate Due Diligence Process in International Real Estate Transactions in Latvia. Balt. J. Real Estate Econ. Constr. Manag. 2015, 3.

-Lecomte, P. New boundaries: Conceptual framework for the analysis of commercial real estate in smart cities. J. Prop. Invest. Financ. 2019, 37, 118–135.

If you find a place and time to add a chapter referring to international literature on the topic, in my opinion it will give the article a broader scope and increase the number of people interested in publishing.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The statement: “The group of academic professors have a slightly lesser concurrence. Practically, the concluding result is mostly achieved by the results gathered from six (out of ten) experts who work in practice. This serves as a good indicator, as it was expected that the methodology would first and foremost be applied by experts who actively participate in urban planning practice and urban management.”

I recommend dropping the first sentence in the above statement. It is abundantly clear that this methodology is aimed at practical application. If I would be one of the residents of the model locality I would also prefer life quality improvements, similarly as practitioners in your research based on the choice of the evaluation criteria. I am missing evaluation indicators that could offer solutions for the future... and eventually provide lessons for positive change in new construction. However, criteria specified in this way might be the basis for their successful extension in desired direction.

Some criteria are not obvious...; why not more and why not less - numerical limits, please, explain it.

E.g.:  “Establishing new public transport stops /presence of existing public transport stops within a diameter of 400m from the furthest locations of the examined zone“

“within walking distance, 400m (5 min walk) and 800m (10 min walk)“

“Orientation: on a long east-west axis within +/- 15 degrees of geographical east-west;“

“Percentage of occupancy within a range of 30-60%“

“Percentage of unbuilt terrain that must be water permeable, within a range of 60-80%“

Line 416 = Table 2: Reducing number of parking spaces in the zone (less than 0.5 per apartment), To reduce parking provision (< 0.5/unit) – what does it mean?

Line 229 ... the zone. ; Why a semicolon?

Line 411 - Figure 2: is confusing / unreadable.

Please discuss following points:

In spatial planning, who and when would be obliged to apply the methodology? Should it be a mandatory component of a planning process? How will it be funded? How is the subjective influence of the assessing expert avoided?

What is the impact of the result of this research on the model area? Obviously, there are incentives that could improve the current quality of the environment.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The methodology for supporting land use management in collective housing towards achieving energy efficiency: a case study of New Belgrade, Serbia

In the initial chapter, the paper explains wide scope and problems of actual urban planning and the consequences it causes in the field of protection of public interest in the countries that have undergone socio-economic transition, as is the case in Serbia.

In the next subsection, the decision for the selection of residential units of the modern urbanism superblocks for elaboration was explained. After describing the aim of the paper and reviewing the literature, an explanation of the methodology was given as follows: 1/ a broad thematic framework for assessing the state of energy efficiency for residential units of the modern urbanism superblocks was explained while stressing out the choice of a specific thematic subgroup (land use and accessibility) and 2/ the steps are described, and the proposed methodology was explained.

The following is the elaboration of the methodology on a concrete example; the participants in the verification of the methodology are ten selected urban planning experts who deal with this part of the city. The final chapter contains concluding remarks, identified advantages and disadvantages as well as proposals for improving the methodology and its application.

Comments.

In relation to the abstract, it is not easy to understand the whole aspects of the study. It is important to write clear the objectives and conclusions.

In the method section important information about the used methods are missing.

All parts of the article miss a straight line in explanation of aims and results.

According to this reason, my evaluation to this manuscript is negative.

With best regards

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 4 Report

This paper constructed a method to help decide the priority of activities in urban land use planning and management with the aim of energy efficiency. And a simulation from the view-point of land use and accessibility was practiced with a case study of New Belgrade, Serbia. This method is valuable to professionals working in the city and municipality administration. However, there are still some issues remained to be resolved. The detailed comments are as follows:

1. In the introduction section, there are too many paragraphs. This section should be revised to be concise and highlight the research topic.
2. In the Introduction part, when you introduce “In cities, energy efficiency issues involve actions within several sectoral areas:……. and construction”, more related reference could be added, e.g. “High spatio-temporal heterogeneity of carbon footprints in the Zhejiang Province, China, from 2005 to 2015: implications for climate change policies. Environmental Chemistry Letters. 2020, 18: 931-939.”
3. As the authors put it, “Surface in a topological context” and “Land use and accessibility” are necessary for forming quality spatial solutions. Please give the reasons why only the second one was considered in this case.
4. It is appealing to translate the idea of FMEA (Failure Modes and Effects Analysis) into an urban area. But the second step of this methodology, “establishing a hierarchy”, needs to be explained in more detail. Specifically, it is suggested to elaborate how the Table 3b in 5.3 section was formed.
5. Please explain what "compatibility" of expert after Table 4 means and what it illustrates
6. It is kind of subjectivity in the experiment of ten experts only once and the validity of the result is open to doubt. The evaluation results given by academic professors and experts who work in practice are somewhat different. This “result” needs to do more experiments to observe confirmed and explain.
7. It is suggested to prove the argument that the application of the proposed methodology would also contribute to avoid the dissatisfaction of the inhabitants. This method seems not to indicate that experts can represent public opinion.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors improved a lot the manuscript. In this sense, I think the article can be accepted in the present form.

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.