Analysis of the Challenges in the Swedish Urban Planning Process: A Case Study about Digitalization

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper “Digital VS Traditional Urban Planning: A Swedish Case Study” was submitted for publication in “green building” special issue of Sustainability  “Building Sustainability within a Smart Built Environment".

Digitalization during building design, in particular from the perspective of urban planning can be a useful tool to make cities more sustainable either for the life’s quality of their inhabitants and for environmental purposes as well.

Authors describe a case study of a new district of a city in Sweden.  They show that generative design can optimize several parameters which can influence the sustainability of the buildings in the long run.  Interestingly, they used generative design incorporating the data from the survey, so that a parameter which is defined important such as “daylight” was chosen as the optimization parameter.  This approach suggests that by adjusting the optimization parameters it is possible to enhance energy savings or other important “hard” factors for sustainability, or at least, to find a good trade-off between parameters which can conflict.  I have in mind countries of southern Europe where “daylight” can conflict with , for example, air conditioning needs during summertime.

I suggest authors to add few comments about the potential of generative design to find trade-offs and if (and how) generative design could be used also during urban refurbishments where architectonical constraints (especially in historical cities) prevent the adoption of some technical solutions. 

The paper clearly fits the requirements for the inclusion in the special issue.

Author Response

Please, find the authors' answers to the Reviewer 1 comments in the enclosed .pdf file.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper compares the current urban planning process with the use of digitalization tools and generative design to improve and optimize urban planning procedures. Following a methodology based on surveys, interviews, and a case study implementation located in Sweden, some results are found and then discussed. Finally, the conclusions are clearly outlined.

The manuscript is well-structured, and the objectives are clear. The methodology is well-explained, even if some parts could be more detailed. The generative design application to a Swedish case study is one of the core elements of the method herein proposed. However, specific information (e.g. the city where the case study is located) is missing. It would be useful to add further information about the case study to comprehend the context where the simulations were made.

Line 88: Please add the name of the city where the case study is located.

Section 2.1: Please add the publication year of the mentioned documents. For readers should be very useful to identify the period of the regulatory framework analyzed.

Line 124: Please provide the name of the software used for the statistical analyses and add the acronym definition.

Line 141: Please add the name of the city where the case study is located.

Lines 149-151: Please add the definition of the acronyms

Line 155: Are the data about the case study open-access? Freely available on the municipality website? If yes, please add the reference.

Lines 161-162: Please make explicit the implementation levels (i.e., national, regional, local) of the mentioned documents (PBL, PBF, environmental code) at the beginning of this section.

Line 178: Please add the definition of the acronym BRR.

Lines 202-206: Please use the same order for the questions provided in the text and the results collected in table 1, or number them in the text and the table. Please update the table 1 caption with more information about how it is structured. As mentioned in section 2.2, a list with all the possible answers is provided, and the respondents must choose between the different options (multiple-choice questions). It could be useful to add some information about the survey process and how the multiple choice questions were defined in section 2.2 to comprehend better table 1 and the results presented here.

Table 1 is not so easy to read. Maybe it should be improved by emphasizing the division of questions+answers.

Lines 207-240: Please add a chart/diagram to improve the communication and visualization of some results presented here.

Figure 2: Please add a detailed description of the different scenarios simulations in the caption. A 2D plan should be useful to comprehend the context (roads, vegetation, other existing buildings and functions, etc.) near the case study area and how the different scenarios interact with the existing stock.

Table 2 caption: Please add some information to the table 2 caption. Is "Stories" the average number of stories in each scenario? Is "Volume" the total built volume in each scenario?

Lines 360, 401-402, 408-409, and 414-418: Please verify if you can quote the respondents' answers.

Lines 446-447: time and economic savings with generative design are not deeply investigated, only a fast estimate is provided in the results. Please add some information about this in the discussion chapter. How could these first results be useful in the whole process?

Author Response

Please, find the authors' answers to the Reviewer 2 comments in the enclosed .pdf file.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Introduction was clear, set the scene for the research well and nicely laid out the structure of the paper.

Similarly, methodology is clearly laid out and there is a good intersection of methods.

Not sure if a full literature review is required for this paper, at it feels more important to ground it in the Swedish context (which is done) rather than a theoretical context.

The legal frameworks reviewed provide a good basis for understanding the process that occurs between submitting a planning notice and the plan taking effect. It is also interesting to understand the interaction of different stakeholders within the process.

The survey has some interesting results, for example, the strongest consideration being noise, outdoor environment etc. Bureaucracy and communication were the main problems reported by respondents, however I found myself wanting a little more information regarding the communication aspect. Specifically, the paper talks about internal and external stakeholders, and how communication issues are mostly related to a lack of knowledge of digital tools or the limiting file size allowances of emails.

I would have liked to understand a bit more about communication in terms of consultation, do stakeholders struggle to agree regarding important planning factors? Or are the communication barriers purely digital (not social). I understand there might not be an answer to this, so instead perhaps it would be useful to include more about the survey’s questions before displaying the results.

Having now read the discussion, and in particular 4.1, I can see there is more clarity around the difficulty of communication and competing public interests. I think it would be nice to have this introduced a little earlier when discussing the survey results.

Overall, I enjoyed this paper. I think there are a number of interesting insights presented and supported by a broad range of evidence. I would really only suggest the change mentioned above, and one other broader change. That is, this paper doesn’t necessarily feel like a comparison between Traditional and Digital urban planning. For example, the issues identified in the traditional planning process probably need to be improved regardless of whether a digitalisation is happening. So rather than a comparison between digital and traditional, it feels more like a paper that is just bringing interesting insights forward for planning as a whole (in the Swedish context).

Author Response

Please, find the authors' answers to the Reviewer 3 comments in the enclosed .pdf file.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf