Usage of and Barriers to Green Spaces in Disadvantaged Neighborhoods: A Case Study in Shi Jiazhuang, Hebei Province, China
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Generic comments.
The authors make a non-optimal use of punctuation throughout the manuscript. Sentences are very short (which is good in general) and in some cases disconnected. With better punctuation, the manuscript would be more readable.
I’ll provide you with a couple of examples, to better explain my point:
Line 56 From the global perspectives, old residential neighbourhoods present a unique phenomenon in urbanisation. Old residential neighbourhoods have become a common phenomenon in various cities in China, severely hindering the healthy development of the urban environment (Yan, 2015). I would use “:” instead of “.” after the word urbanisation. Indeed, the sentence that comes subsequently is strictly related to the previous one.
Materials and methods
The questionnaire should be better described in this section. You just provide a brief description in 3 lines (from 155 to 158). Here I think you should explain the ratio behind your work: why did you make such questions? Why did you ask about their occupation and education level? You give some pieces of information about the ratio behind your manuscript throughout the text; however, this is the section where it should be condensed.
Results section
The entire section is verbose and should be re-written. Results should (I quote from the Authors’ guidelines) provide a concise and precise description of the experimental results, their interpretation as well as the experimental conclusions that can be drawn. This has not been done for this manuscript. The clearest example is the extensive quoting of individual interviews.
Specific comments
Line 42: the “.” After homelessness should be removed.
Line 44: what do you mean by “lacks character”?
Figure 1: scale bar and north arrow should be added
Line 141: the criteria are not clear. I quote: and each district selects the old residential neighbourhoods with the largest number of households. What do you mean here?
Figure 3: scale bar should be added
Line 232: do you mean lower education level? It’s unclear what Other means
Line 237: here you made such a strong statement. I don’t think it’s safe to say that there is a cause-effect relationship. You should provide at least one reference supporting this statement
Line 252 : If you conduct single open interviews, you should openly declare it in the M&M section. Plus, I can’t find the point in reporting the outcome from 1 single interview, when you have about 690 compiled questionnaires.
Line 271 (and table 2): The survey also found that most respondents prefer to visit the green spaces at weekends (88.5%) compared to weekdays (42.4%)as shown in (Table 2). How is that possible? The sum of people that prefer to visit parks during the weekend and people that does during weekdays should be 100 %. Here, it’s 130%.
Questionnaire, question Why do you visit this neighborhood green space? You can choose multiple? Please remove the last question mark.
Table 3 (continued): the table should be formatted properly.
Line 314: same as line 252. I found out that you quoted a lot of interviews. Could these interviews be translated into something more robust? Citing single interviews it’s not a robust methodology for making hypotheses about people’s behaviour.
Author Response
Thank you for your comments on our manuscript. The comments are valuable and helpful. We have read the comments carefully and made corrections. Following the instructions in your letter, we uploaded the revised manuscript file. Modifications in the text use blue , see manuscript for details.
Point 1: The authors make a non-optimal use of punctuation throughout the manuscript. Sentences are very short (which is good in general) and in some cases disconnected. With better punctuation, the manuscript would be more readable.
I’ll provide you with a couple of examples, to better explain my point:
Line 56 From the global perspectives, old residential neighbourhoods present a unique phenomenon in urbanisation. Old residential neighbourhoods have become a common phenomenon in various cities in China, severely hindering the healthy development of the urban environment (Yan, 2015). I would use “:” instead of “.” after the word urbanisation. Indeed, the sentence that comes subsequently is strictly related to the previous one.
Response 1: We have corrected incorrect punctuation and proofread sentences throughout the article, see full text.
Point 2: Materials and methods
The questionnaire should be better described in this section. You just provide a brief description in 3 lines (from 155 to 158). Here I think you should explain the ratio behind your work: why did you make such questions? Why did you ask about their occupation and education level? You give some pieces of information about the ratio behind your manuscript throughout the text; however, this is the section where it should be condensed.
Response 2:We have reorganized this part, deleted the following research process, and explained the survey method and the setting of the questionnaire.
Point 3: Results section
The entire section is verbose and should be re-written. Results should (I quote from the Authors’ guidelines) provide a concise and precise description of the experimental results, their interpretation as well as the experimental conclusions that can be drawn. This has not been done for this manuscript. The clearest example is the extensive quoting of individual interviews.
Response 3: We have rewritten the Results and Discussion section, cited references to support our claims, and removed some examples of interviews, see Results and Discussion section.
Specific comments
Point 4:Line 42: the “.” After homelessness should be removed.
Response 4: The period has been removed, see line 41.
Point 5:Line 44: what do you mean by “lacks character”?
Response 5: Sentence reworded, see lines 41-42.
Point 6:Figure 1: scale bar and north arrow should be added
Response 6: Figure 1 has added a north arrow and a scale bar
Point 7: Line 141: the criteria are not clear. I quote: and each district selects the old residential neighbourhoods with the largest number of households. What do you mean here?
Response 7: We have reworded the sentence, see lines 132-133
Point 8: Figure 3: scale bar should be added
Response 8: Figure 3 has added a north arrow and a scale bar
Point 9: Line 232: do you mean lower education level? It’s unclear what Other means
Response 9: This sentence has been rewritten, see lines 222-225
Point 10: Line 237: here you made such a strong statement. I don’t think it’s safe to say that there is a cause-effect relationship. You should provide at least one reference supporting this statement
Response 10: We have added an example here that supports the previous statement, see lines 225-231.
Point 11: Line 252 : If you conduct single open interviews, you should openly declare it in the M&M section. Plus, I can’t find the point in reporting the outcome from 1 single interview, when you have about 690 compiled questionnaires.
Response 11: We have modified the M&M section. Added the content of the interview method and explained the significance of the interview, see lines 145-160 and 179-181. In addition the Results section has condensed the content of the interviews.
Point 12: Line 271 (and table 2): The survey also found that most respondents prefer to visit the green spaces at weekends (88.5%) compared to weekdays (42.4%)as shown in (Table 2). How is that possible? The sum of people that prefer to visit parks during the weekend and people that does during weekdays should be 100 %. Here, it’s 130%.
Response 12: In response to this question, I set a multiple-choice question, which involves the simultaneous selection of weekends and weekdays, so the sum of the data is not 100%.
Point 13: Questionnaire, question Why do you visit this neighborhood green space? You can choose multiple? Please remove the last question mark.
Response 13: We have removed the second question, see Table 2
Point 14: Table 3 (continued): the table should be formatted properly.
Response 14: Table 3 (continued) has been reformatted
Point 15: Line 314: same as line 252. I found out that you quoted a lot of interviews. Could these interviews be translated into something more robust? Citing single interviews it’s not a robust methodology for making hypotheses about people’s behaviour.
Response 15: We have removed similar sentences and reduced the content of the interview section of the article.
Reviewer 2 Report
The study expands our knowledge about the function and use of green spaces by city residents. Importantly, as the authors mention, its intercultural dimension is valuable, as most previous research has been conducted in the West.
The authors focus on the disadvantaged neighborhood, where many social problems often exist.
The examined sample is sufficient, the data analyzes were done correctly, the data are subsequently explained and discussed.
I have just a few comments.
Introduction:
Perhaps the authors could also mention the work by Kuo and her collaborators. Their research was conducted in the disadvantaged neighborhood of Robert Taylor Homes in Chicago. They mainly deal with the influence of greenery on anti-social and criminal behavior, e.g.:
Kuo, F. E., Bacaicoa, M., & Sullivan, W. C. (1998). Transforming inner-city landscapes: Trees, sense of safety, and preference. Environment and behavior, 30(1), 28-59.
Coley, R. L., Sullivan, W. C., & Kuo, F. E. (1997). Where does community grow? The social context created by nature in urban public housing. Environment and behavior, 29(4), 468-494.
Kuo, F. E., & Sullivan, W. C. (2001). Aggression and violence in the inner city: Effects of environment via mental fatigue. Environment and behavior, 33(4), 543-571.
Given that in Europe and the US, disadvantaged neighborhoods are mostly associated with higher crime rates, which in turn make people afraid to go out and visit green public spaces, the authors could mention whether the same holds for Asian cities, specifically for China as well (I think this is not the case).
The introduction should be closed with specific research questions, what specifically and which connections the authors want to investigate.
Materials and Methods:
It should be described in detail what type of green spaces there are in the researched area.
Author Response
Thank you for your comments on our manuscript. The comments are valuable and helpful. We have read the comments carefully and made corrections. Following the instructions in your letter, we uploaded the revised manuscript file. Modifications in the text use green words, see manuscript for details.
Point 1: Introduction:
Perhaps the authors could also mention the work by Kuo and her collaborators. Their research was conducted in the disadvantaged neighborhood of Robert Taylor Homes in Chicago. They mainly deal with the influence of greenery on anti-social and criminal behavior, e.g.:
Kuo, F. E., Bacaicoa, M., & Sullivan, W. C. (1998). Transforming inner-city landscapes: Trees, sense of safety, and preference. Environment and behavior, 30(1), 28-59.
Coley, R. L., Sullivan, W. C., & Kuo, F. E. (1997). Where does community grow? The social context created by nature in urban public housing. Environment and behavior, 29(4), 468-494.
Kuo, F. E., & Sullivan, W. C. (2001). Aggression and violence in the inner city: Effects of environment via mental fatigue. Environment and behavior, 33(4), 543-571.
Response 1: Thanks to the reviewer for the recommendation, we have read these three articles, which are very relevant to my research, and have been cited in the text, (see References 57,58,72),See text (lines 319-320, lines 529-530)
Point 2: Given that in Europe and the US, disadvantaged neighborhoods are mostly associated with higher crime rates, which in turn make people afraid to go out and visit green public spaces, the authors could mention whether the same holds for Asian cities, specifically for China as well (I think this is not the case).
Response 2:The article adds the security issues of disadvantaged communities in Europe and the United States, and focuses on the sense of security of residents in old residential areas in China, see lines 239-243 and 518-535.
Point 3: The introduction should be closed with specific research questions, what specifically and which connections the authors want to investigate.
Response 3: We added the study research objective at the end of the Introduction section, see lines 110-114.
Point 4: Materials and Methods:
It should be described in detail what type of green spaces there are in the researched area.
Response 4: We have added the types of green space in the old residential neighbourhoods in the part of the research site, see lines 126-129.
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments to the manuscript: Usage and Barriers to Use Green Space at Disadvantage Neighbourhood: A Case Study in Shi Jiazhuang, Hebei Province, China – II Round
Dear Editor and Authors,
The manuscript has been improved from the previous version, and I think it can now be considered for publication. I have a few more comments though:
Line 41: What do you mean by inadequate? I think that this statement is too generic and inaccurate; for many disadvantaged places, the GI may also be an opportunity for urban regeneration.
Line 213: why is that? Do you have any hypotheses?
Line 229: Please provide a reference
Table 2: please remark throughout the text that double choices were allowed. Plus, I don’t think is correct to indicate this result as a percentage. I would rather use only the number of answers. This applies to all tables containing percentages exceeding 100%.
Line 236: I still can’t find the point of reporting single interviews. They don’t prove anything unless their part of a wider analysis, in which you can generalize and draw conclusions starting from all of the single interviews. I suggest you to remove it.
Table 3: here you present a lot of data. Have you considered using figures, to make it more readable?
Please consider doing so. As a reference, look at Lausi, L., Amodio, M., Sebastiani, A., Fusaro, L., & Manes, F. (2022). Assessing cultural ecosystem services during the COVID-19 pandemic at the garden of ninfa (Italy). Annali di Botanica, 12, 63-75, figure 4. I don’t think is essential, however, it would make your manuscript much easier to read.
Author Response
Thank you again for your valuable suggestions. We have made the following revisions to your questions and marked them in blue:
Point 1: Line 41: What do you mean by inadequate? I think that this statement is too generic and inaccurate; for many disadvantaged places, the GI may also be an opportunity for urban regeneration.
Response 1: We have readjusted this word, see line 41-42.
Point 2: Line 213: why is that? Do you have any hypotheses?
Response 2: We present hypotheses and inferences following the citation, see lines 210-214.
Point 3: Line 229: Please provide a reference
Response 3: We provide a reference case on lines 230-233 to illustrate the previous point.
Point 4: Table 2: please remark throughout the text that double choices were allowed. Plus, I don’t think is correct to indicate this result as a percentage. I would rather use only the number of answers. This applies to all tables containing percentages exceeding 100%.
Response 4: We have explained the content of multiple-choice questions in 2.2, see line 154-155. In addition, we also modified table2 and deleted the value of percentage.
Point 5: Line 236: I still can’t find the point of reporting single interviews. They don’t prove anything unless their part of a wider analysis, in which you can generalize and draw conclusions starting from all of the single interviews. I suggest you to remove it.
Response 5:We have removed the content of the individual interviews and summarized the responses of the younger group, see lines 247-250.
Point 6: Table 3: here you present a lot of data. Have you considered using figures, to make it more readable?
Please consider doing so. As a reference, look at Lausi, L., Amodio, M., Sebastiani, A., Fusaro, L., & Manes, F. (2022). Assessing cultural ecosystem services during the COVID-19 pandemic at the garden of ninfa (Italy). Annali di Botanica, 12, 63-75, figure 4. I don’t think is essential, however, it would make your manuscript much easier to read.
Response 6: Thank you for your suggestion. If we use figures, we may need many figures, which will take up a lot of pages. We still hope to retain the table format, which may be more concise.
