Community Preferences for Urban Systems Transformation in Australia

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The article "Community Preferences for Urban Systems Transformation in Australia" is an interesting piece of research that builds upon a real political process which involved expert and experiential knowledge from practitioners and citizens. The Australian cities are in the particular focus of the study which tries to reveal common trends in the attitudes and forward looking normative thinking about the future of these cities. Both process and content, as well as functioning and form have been covered as topics that shaped a nationwide survey and emerged from 7 workshops held prior to its conduction. The whole effort is an applied sceince dedicated to the wider consultation process around a 10-year strategy for the urban systems and their sustainable development as part of the different Australian regions.  

The work is very clear as a message from the lessons learned in the practical consultation process around hte national urban strategy of Australia. The mixing of qualitative and quantitative methods (with an accent on the latter) for the better understanding of perceptions is a classical approach that is well grounded in the social sciences instrumentarium. This can be well understood as means to an end of covering a whole continent country's urban development issues for today and for the near future. The neat explanation of the results from the survey makes the article a good informative reading. The conclusions are tightly linked with the results and it seems that the real urban policy can benefit from the consultation process in order to answer not only to the preferences but also to fundamental notions which have been widely addressed in the international and in the Australian academic literature in the field for the last quarter century. The sustainable urban development, the urban sprawl and the mixed use urban development, tha collaborative, participatory and more equitable urban and regional planning are some of these issues that are high on the research and development agenda.

Several important weaknesses of the study can be outlined that the authors should address about:

• The general structure which is relatively weak in terms of theoretical grounds both in terms of planning and urban theory, as well in the situating of the Australian urban development in the international development and urban political and ideological scene. Here a little bit more structured literature review can be helpful instead of some explanatory texts which may be shorter but still well representing the process and the research approach around the survey.
• The introduction may be better balanced between the process and the content oriented narrative and facts as the content or the urban development state and outlook should be backed by some major facts and figures (profile) about the overall patterns and depth of issues (e.g. from the affordable housing to the car dependency, from the land consumption and infrastructure intensity to the levels of pollution, from the liveability indexes to the ecological footprints of the metroolitan areas or similiar synthesised information) making use of available actual indicators that are in thematic relation to the major survey blocks
• The materials and methods that should better inform the reader about the probable error from the sample in addition to the constraints of the approach of self-selected filling of the survey and the demographic distortions that it led to and are briefly explained. Furthermore the coding of the open questions or additional answers has to be additionally explained as logic and when there is concatenation of similiar but still different answers "and/or" should be used in the title of the group of answers in order to keep the original meaning of the answers.
• The discussion which can also make better link with the secondary literature (other qualitative and quantitative data about Australian cities and regions, including spatial patterns and distribution of issues, accessibility and mobility challenges, widely discussed urban cases, development evaluations, the international context of political documents such as the New Urban Agenda, the SDG 11 and its targets) in the conclusions about the relevance of the survey. Further more the development conflict can be articulated in more depth as it seems crucial for the realization of the strategy if not tackled by adequate citizen rights in contrast with the dominant capital accumulation through urbanization that drives the urban development process in Australia and elsewhere

Author Response

Reviewer #1

The article "Community Preferences for Urban Systems Transformation in Australia" is an interesting piece of research that builds upon a real political process which involved expert and experiential knowledge from practitioners and citizens. The Australian cities are in the particular focus of the study which tries to reveal common trends in the attitudes and forward looking normative thinking about the future of these cities. Both process and content, as well as functioning and form have been covered as topics that shaped a nationwide survey and emerged from 7 workshops held prior to its conduction. The whole effort is an applied sceince dedicated to the wider consultation process around a 10-year strategy for the urban systems and their sustainable development as part of the different Australian regions.  

The work is very clear as a message from the lessons learned in the practical consultation process around hte national urban strategy of Australia. The mixing of qualitative and quantitative methods (with an accent on the latter) for the better understanding of perceptions is a classical approach that is well grounded in the social sciences instrumentarium. This can be well understood as means to an end of covering a whole continent country's urban development issues for today and for the near future. The neat explanation of the results from the survey makes the article a good informative reading. The conclusions are tightly linked with the results and it seems that the real urban policy can benefit from the consultation process in order to answer not only to the preferences but also to fundamental notions which have been widely addressed in the international and in the Australian academic literature in the field for the last quarter century. The sustainable urban development, the urban sprawl and the mixed use urban development, tha collaborative, participatory and more equitable urban and regional planning are some of these issues that are high on the research and development agenda.

Thank you

Several important weaknesses of the study can be outlined that the authors should address about:

The general structure which is relatively weak in terms of theoretical grounds both in terms of planning and urban theory, as well in the situating of the Australian urban development in the international development and urban political and ideological scene. Here a little bit more structured literature review can be helpful instead of some explanatory texts which may be shorter but still well representing the process and the research approach around the survey.

We added a structured literature review at the start of the introduction.

The introduction may be better balanced between the process and the content oriented narrative and facts as the content or the urban development state and outlook should be backed by some major facts and figures (profile) about the overall patterns and depth of issues (e.g. from the affordable housing to the car dependency, from the land consumption and infrastructure intensity to the levels of pollution, from the liveability indexes to the ecological footprints of the metroolitan areas or similiar synthesised information) making use of available actual indicators that are in thematic relation to the major survey blocks

We added additional review here about the status of urban development.

 

The materials and methods that should better inform the reader about the probable error from the sample in addition to the constraints of the approach of self-selected filling of the survey and the demographic distortions that it led to and are briefly explained.

We expanded this discussion

Furthermore the coding of the open questions or additional answers has to be additionally explained as logic and when there is concatenation of similiar but still different answers "and/or" should be used in the title of the group of answers in order to keep the original meaning of the answers.

We added some additional explanation about this.

The discussion which can also make better link with the secondary literature (other qualitative and quantitative data about Australian cities and regions, including spatial patterns and distribution of issues, accessibility and mobility challenges, widely discussed urban cases, development evaluations, the international context of political documents such as the New Urban Agenda, the SDG 11 and its targets) in the conclusions about the relevance of the survey. Further more the development conflict can be articulated in more depth as it seems crucial for the realization of the strategy if not tackled by adequate citizen rights in contrast with the dominant capital accumulation through urbanization that drives the urban development process in Australia and elsewhere

We expanded the discussion to address the New Urban Agenda and SDG11 and its targets.

Reviewer 2 Report

In my opinion, the paper is well-written, including the concise description of the methodology and detailed presentation of results. I have few suggestions which the authors could take into consideration in preparing the revision of the paper.

Introduction should give better, up to date literature review and Disscusion should contain comparison of the proposed methdology with the current studies. Also, the Conclusion is missing with the authors' final remarks. 

Author Response

Reveiwer #2

In my opinion, the paper is well-written, including the concise description of the methodology and detailed presentation of results. I have few suggestions which the authors could take into consideration in preparing the revision of the paper.]

Thank you

Introduction should give better, up to date literature review and Disscusion should contain comparison of the proposed methdology with the current studies. Also, the Conclusion is missing with the authors' final remarks. 

We expanded the Introduction and discussion to incorporate these suggestions and added a Conclusion section.

Reviewer 3 Report

• In my opinion the abstract is too long. It should be improved.
• The paper presents the questionnaire survey  results - but the discussion of the results is weak. The discussion of the obtained results is expected in the discussion part of the paper, while, a summary was also written there. The Discussion section must be improved.
• The article summary can be prepared in a separate section.
• The quality of the figures should be improved. They should be developed in the same style.
• Comments of figure (survey question) should be placed immediately 
   before / after the figure  - in the proposed layout, the reader must look for a figure. 

Author Response

Reviewer #3

In my opinion the abstract is too long. It should be improved.

We revised the abstract and shortened it for readability to 178 words.

The paper presents the questionnaire survey results - but the discussion of the results is weak. The discussion of the obtained results is expected in the discussion part of the paper, while, a summary was also written there. The Discussion section must be improved.

We expanded and improved the discussion section and added a Conclusions section.

The article summary can be prepared in a separate section.

We expanded the discussion and added a conclusions section to address this.

The quality of the figures should be improved. They should be developed in the same style.

We did this.

Comments of figure (survey question) should be placed immediately before / after the figure  - in the proposed layout, the reader must look for a figure

We fixed this

Reviewer 4 Report

The paper Community Preferences for Urban Systems Transformation in Australia deals about interesting topic and is worth to be published in Sustainability. Nevertheless, it needs major changes.

2. Materials and methods: Do you use any statistical assessment for your data evaluation? Subchapter about statistical data analasys is missing. Add more detailed information about your work with the dataset.

How many respondents do you have? Precise it in the Material and methods. On the line 114 up to 50 leaders are mentioned, on the line 130 you mention 641 respondents and on the line 167 is written that 715 people answered the survey.

The chapter 3. Results sounds like results and discussion. It is relevant to join results and discussion to one chapter. But the discussion part is very weak and should be deepen. You should discuss your results with other works and papers not only from Australia but wordwide.

The chapter 4. sounds like conclusion. Move lines 565-574 to the material and methods because on these results of the experts´ workshop do you prepare the survey for the public, isn´t it?

Fig. 2: Use same graphic (legend) for all three cities (Brisbane is different).

Figs. 1 and 2: Scale bar and north arrow are missing.

Figs. 5, 6, 7, 16: Precice what does the x-axe mean.

Figs. 10, 11, 12: The caption of the x-axe is too small and unreadable.

L 280: This reference is missing in the references list.

L 282-293: It sounds like discussion but references are missing.

L 304-305: The same paragraph.

L 343: What does the abreviation EVs mean? Explain it.

Supplementary materials should be after references.

Figs. S2, S3, S4, S5, S6, S7, S8: Precice what does the x-axe mean.

Author Response

Reviewer #4

The paper Community Preferences for Urban Systems Transformation in Australia deals about interesting topic and is worth to be published in Sustainability. Nevertheless, it needs major changes.

2. Materials and methods: Do you use any statistical assessment for your data evaluation? Subchapter about statistical data analasys is missing. Add more detailed information about your work with the dataset.

We did not do any additional statistical analysis since the survey results did not support this.

How many respondents do you have? Precise it in the Material and methods. On the line 114 up to 50 leaders are mentioned, on the line 130 you mention 641 respondents and on the line 167 is written that 715 people answered the survey.

We fixed this discrepancy

The chapter 3. Results sounds like results and discussion. It is relevant to join results and discussion to one chapter. But the discussion part is very weak and should be deepen. You should discuss your results with other works and papers not only from Australia but worldwide.

We expanded the discussion and added a Conclusions section.

The chapter 4. sounds like conclusion. Move lines 565-574 to the material and methods because on these results of the experts´ workshop do you prepare the survey for the public, isn´t it?

Fig. 2: Use same graphic (legend) for all three cities (Brisbane is different).

Figs. 1 and 2: Scale bar and north arrow are missing.

Figs. 5, 6, 7, 16: Precice what does the x-axe mean.

We added the title on the x axes for these figures

Figs. 10, 11, 12: The caption of the x-axe is too small and unreadable.

L 280: This reference is missing in the references list.

L 282-293: It sounds like discussion but references are missing.

L 304-305: The same paragraph.

L 343: What does the abreviation EVs mean? Explain it.

Supplementary materials should be after references.

We fixed this

Figs. S2, S3, S4, S5, S6, S7, S8: Precice what does the x-axe mean.

We added the title on the x axes for these figures

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

There are sufficient changes in the article that give decent answer to the reviews.

Author Response

Thank you

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper  has been improved according to the reviewer's comments.

The authors have done a good job of addressing the suggested changes.

The revised version of the paper is acceptable in my opinion.

 

Author Response

Thank you

Reviewer 4 Report

The paper was seriously improved. Nevetheless, I recoment aditional minor revision.

The weakest part is presentation of the results. Differences between respondents according their gender, location, age, commuting, political preferences and incomes are presented only in he first subchapter Ranking Issues in the present and pathways to desired futures (L 270-275). These differences and their statistical significance should be presented also for other topics (subchapters). If there are any differences, authors should write it.

Fig. 3 is missing.

Author Response

The paper was seriously improved. Nevetheless, I recoment aditional minor revision.

The weakest part is presentation of the results. Differences between respondents according their gender, location, age, commuting, political preferences and incomes are presented only in he first subchapter Ranking Issues in the present and pathways to desired futures (L 270-275). These differences and their statistical significance should be presented also for other topics (subchapters). If there are any differences, authors should write it.

Thank you, we stratified the other questions as recommended and added comments on this in each of the sections. Because of the small sample sizes for many of these groups, as well as the fact that the groups in our survey are not necessarily representative of the Australian population as a whole, we decided that further statistical analysis to determine significance would not allow us to make any additional valuable conclusions.

Fig. 3 is missing.

We added figure 3 back in. Thank you for catching this.