The Role of Collective Spaces in Achieving Social Sustainability: A Comparative Approach to Enhance Urban Design
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear authors, this is a very interesting article and it peen new insights into an other culture. Already the beginning was great, as you clearly defined what a "cul-de-sac" means in the Palestine context! 2-3 pictures already at the beginning of the article as examples would be good to show how that can look like.
Good range and mix of methods.
Very well presented with graphs, pictures and maps.
What is a „lake of environmental qualities“ (Fig. 4.1)?
Did you also ask for the size of the apartments in the cul-de-sac or are the more or less the same (I assume not)?
3.2.1 and 3.2.2 is the same text on "satisfaction with privacy and security", table 1 appears 2 times!
The paragraph on „guidelines for designing sustainable....is too short (more or less only the table), could be better explained.
a bit more space could have been used to compare the cut-due-sacs with similar housing environments in other cities so to also learn from each other.
Some minor spelling mistakes, please check again the whole document.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer
We thank you for comments and suggestions to improve our manuscript. We are encouraged by the Reviewers’ constructive and helpful comments which we believe have contributed to produce a better version of the paper. In this revision, we have re-written our manuscript in accordance with the comments by the three reviewers.
In the attached document, you will find the overall changes made in the manuscript to comply with your requirements.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
It is an interesting piece summarizing and discussing the applied approach of comparing the social sustainability of collective spaces.
The paper is original due to the methodology for comparisons discussed and the overall investigation of an important topic about the sustainability of collective spaces.
The literature is overall a bit limited and there are many outdated resources used in this paper, however, the overall context is well understood. It is suggested to include more recent references.
The results are overall clear. Overall, the paper is pragmatic and consistent and informs interested academics about a comparative approach to enhancing urban design.
On page 4 about the ‘aims to identify the physical characteristics of the Cul-de-sac as existing collective spaces in traditional housing design to identify the suitable case studies to conduct the questionnaire survey,’ it is suggested to better describe the characteristics of the case study in figure 1 by improving the quality of the image and improving the description of colors in the legend. Particularly the use of the color ‘red’= ‘Cul-de-sac’ is not clear if referred to buildings or to streets. It is recommended to link figure 1 with figure 2, since is not clear the selected area of analysis, and the orientation of the street is confusing. I suggest using different colors to highlight the 'Cul-de-sac’ streets and grid streets describing the urban morphology of the area.
In general, the paper's quality of communication clearly expresses its case. It is pertinent to the knowledge of the journal’s readership. The clarity of expression and readability are satisfactory. The structure of the sentences and the jargon used are correct.
As a general evaluation, the readability of the paper is acceptable and does not present any evidence of weakness. The publication is suggested with minor revisions by improving the figures' qualities, improving the figures' capture descriptions, and updating the references with more recent resources.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer
We thank you for the comments and suggestions to improve our manuscript. We are encouraged by the Reviewers’ constructive and helpful comments which we believe have contributed to produce a better version of the paper. In this revision, we have re-written our manuscript in accordance with the comments by the three reviewers.
In the attached document, you will find the overall changes made in the manuscript to comply with your requirements.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Dear Authors,
Authors had studied by interesting approaches in this study. This paper had discussed for four parameters of the privacy, security, equality, and environmental quality.
I was wondering if you could clarify about my questions.
1. Lines 37, Pages 3
Please could you explain an observation method with more details? It would be helpful understanding your results.
2. Lines 4, Pages 8
How much area of the square meters, do you assume of "the appropriateness of the space size for the residents"?
3. Lines 23-30, Pages 11
Why residents do not feel comfortable viewing public or commercial streets?
4. How many traditional style housing (what %) are in cities where authors had searched?
Author Response
Dear Reviewer
We thank you for the comments and suggestions to improve our manuscript. We are encouraged by the Reviewers’ constructive and helpful comments which we believe have contributed to produce a better version of the paper. In this revision, we have re-written our manuscript in accordance with the comments by the three reviewers.
In the attached document, you will find the overall changes made in the manuscript to comply with your requirements.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
