Settlements and Urban Morphological Quality in Landscape Planning–Analytical Models and Regulating Tools in the Landscape Plan of Regione Toscana

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is a good paper which links an issue of interest – settlements and urban landscape quality – to landscape planning. This makes the research an interesting contribution to the literature on urban landscape quality. The paper is well-referenced. In particular, the theory relating to urban landscape quality is given a good overview, albeit basic and simplified, founded on a wide literature.

Overall, the paper is well structured, with a sequence of section and sub-sections that are consistent to the aim of the work.

However, to an international audience, which may not be familiar with the Italian planning context, the meaning of many parts of the article may escape, and other parts may even be obscure.

Some examples are given below, but I suggest that the author(s) re-read the text putting themselves in the shoes of a non-Italian reader, or one who has little experience of the Italian planning system.  

'Statutory' in English has a different meaning from the one given to this term in the article. I recommend highlighting this in the text (using italics or inverted commas) and providing a short explanatory note. 

Readers unfamiliar with the Italian planning system in general, and of the Region of Tuscany in particular, may not understand the meaning of "operational planning". A brief explanation of the articulation into 'structural and operational planning' is needed before the actual positioning between lines 340 and 348.

In what sense should the sentence "the Plan allocates many resources to the development of the governance of infrastructural and settlement patterns in the regional area" (lines 385-386) be interpreted? This is a clarification that the following lines (387-395) only partially provide. In particular, the question arises as to whether the landscape plan should not also be respected by plans and programmes at a higher level than the municipal and provincial one, starting with the regional one. If the regional planning system is essentially centred on the municipal scale, some objectives of the PIT/PPR are obviously out of reach. This raises the question on which plans and programmes decisions to locate areas for new industrial and commercial activities in the region are based. If there are plans and programmes at regional level for deciding on the location of such activities, is this provided for by law, by the PIT/PPR or has any form of coordination with the PIT/PPR been promoted in practice?

The traditional approach to zoning, based on the 1968 Interministerial Decree providing for the designation of 'homogeneous territorial zones', is introduced for the first time in the conclusions, apart from the reference to such Decree in Table 4. Again, for a reader unfamiliar with Italian planning, the implications of this legislative reference can be really difficult to understand.

The last section mixes Discussion and Conclusion. I suggest dividing them into two short sections. First, a section in which the results of your study are discussed in the light of previous studies and the contribution of your study to the scientific discussion on this topic is highlighted. Then, the Conclusion section, in addition to summarising the main idea, purpose and results of your study, could give some indication of possible future theoretical and empirical developments and lessons learned for the future of such an approach to landscape planning, hopefully including some engagement with the lessons of this regional experience for other places in the EU and in the wider international context.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Interesting research based on a clear methodology. The structure of the article is appropriate. I recommend limiting the descriptive form for the readability of the work. I recommend supplementing the conclusions (discussions) with the possibility of supra-local implementation of the research.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

GENERAL COMMENTS

The paper is not an exceptionally original research topic, but it deals with a subject that is still very relevant and needs further research. The practical, local application of landscape studies conducted on a regional scale shows that the field still needs new solutions and new ways of combining these two scales and two types of approaches to planning. Thus, despite the fact that this topic has been discussed for a long time, the paper should be considered important and needed.

The entire article is a logical sequence of content that is well connected. The literature review is relatively poor.However, it is compensated by a very extensive discussion of the content of the Regional Landscape Plan of Regione Toscana, which is crucial for the analysis of the results of the paper.  In fact it can be said that the article is both an analysis of the implementation of this document and a detailed discussion and analysis of its content. I consider it as an asset and a good introduction to the analysis.It can be added in the introduction and purpose of the paper. However, the readability of the paper needs improvement, especially explanation of terms and abbreviations used in the text as well as legibility of figures and their connection to the text.

TITLE AND SCOPE

It seems to me that the article touches on many issues of landscape quality but still does not exhaust the subject. Because landscape is a very capacious and complex concept. In their analysis, the authors focused mainly on the morphology of settlements (spatial arrangements), but they omitted such aspects of landscape quality as composition, panoramas, architecture, greenery and many other elements that make up the landscape of individual landscape interiors, including urban interiors. It seems to me that it would be worthwhile to indicate which aspects of landscape quality have not been analyzed or even to modify the title and narrow the scope of the paper.

INTRODUCTION

It is very general and cross-sectional, but clear and logical so it makes rather sufficient sense to justify the purpose of the paper and provides a sufficient though perhaps a little too vague basis for further analysis. The introduction refers to the topic of the paper and the structure of the introduction and the whole paper is logical and clear. However, I have doubts about the sense of placing the general conclusion at the end of the introduction. The text here is hardly comprehensible and is an unnecessary repetition of the content placed at the end of the article. Besides, the concept of Tuscan Scenario should be clarified. In many places the authors seem to assume that the reader is familiar with the history of Italian urban planning and the Italian spatial planning system.

METHOD

More information about the people interviewed would be useful. Were they all the designers of the plans studied or just a select few? How many were all the designers and officials responsible for the plans? On what basis were the interviewees selected? How many were external designers versus internal designers from municipal offices? Did all those selected for interview agree to be interviewed? (Or how many did not agree?) In line 853 you write about collective interviews. The method description does not mention it. This needs to be clarified. Why does the table in the results show only a summary of the outcome of the interviews with the 4 designers, while in the method you write that we were able to interview five designers for each of the eight plans we examined? And this would suggest as many as 40 interviews. This is not clearly and precisely described. If these are only selected interviews it should be stated in the table description. If one person was responsible for two plans it should also be indicated which person was responsible for which plans. Which plans did the interviews not concern? The interviews are a very important and valuable part of your work and conducting them was a very good supplement to the analyses. However, it should be better specified how representative they are for the assessment of the analyzed documents. 

DISCUSSION

It is very good, but there is a lack of concrete proposals for changes which could improve implementation of Regional Landscape Plan of Regione Toscana in local plans. Proposals could concern both landscape plan regulations and ways of implementation.

DETAILED NOTES

References should be in alphabetical order

All figures must have a legend - an explanation of signs and symbols.

Captions on figures should be translated into English (e.g. figure 1,3,4,5) or at least explained in figure caption.

Chapter 2.1, Verse 247-252 - Somewhere here it would be useful to add how long the Regional Landscape Plan has been in operation in Italy (whether it is a new tool or an old one but not very widespread)

Section 2.2 Verse 320 - The abbreviation "PS" is used here, which is not explained beforehand and clearly assigned to a specific document. For a person not familiar with the Italian legal system, this is difficult to read and requires referring back to previous chapters, while the explanation of the abbreviation appears only later in this chapter.

Chapter 4.1.4 Verse 743 - Give the figure number and include the figure in the chapter where it is referred to in the text. Vicchio is barely legible in figure 8.  Markings of fragments of the village are illegible and it is unclear what the colors mean - perhaps it would be better to show a fragment of this village, but in better legibility

Figure 9 - What does this figure illustrate? There is no reference to it in the text. And figures are important for understanding the results - it is worth to relate it to a specific issue described in the text. Key points or parts of towns described in the text could be indicated with arrows on the figures to improve the readability of both the figures and the text. The role of figures is very important in this article because it shows how quite theoretical and general planning provisions look like in practice. So it is worth to work more on the appearance of the figures, their readability and good connection with the text.

Figure 11 - similar to figure 9

Author Response

"Please see the attachment." We understand that in the system there was a problem of doubling the comments of the reviewer n ° 2. We attach here in the reviewer 3 box the same file uploaded in the reviewer 2 box.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf