Integrating Soundscape Criteria in Urban Sustainable Regeneration Processes: An Example of Comfort and Health Improvement

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is a high-quality paper.  The aim and design of the research are clearly explained.  The findings have been adequately discussed and the conclusion is supported by the findings.  The research limitations have been duly acknowledged.  Therefore, I am happy to recommend a straight acceptance of the paper for publication.  Keep it up!

Just one minor point (which is up to the authors to decide whether to address or not) - What were the relationships between the objective and subjective sound measures before the intervention?  Did the intervention moderate the relationships?  

Author Response

The authors would like to thank you for your amiability and consideration in your positive assessment of this work.

In relation with the relationships between objective and subjective measure, the authors would like to inform you that the correlations between the subjective measure (SSC_pleasant: soundscape pleasantness) and the objective parameters of sound levels and events are not significant. Only trend relationships (p between 0.05 and 0.1) were detected between pleasantness and LAeq (r=-0.260; p=0.088), L10 (r=-0.256; p=0.094), L50 (r=-0.264; p=0.083), and L90 (r=-0.263; p=0.085) in the PRE phase (before the intervention). All these correlations are negative, indicating that the higher the sound level, the lower the pleasantness. After the intervention, only a positive trend relationship between pleasantness and L90 (r=0.257; p=0.053) was detected, indicating that the higher the L90, the greater the pleasantness.

These results could be interpreted in the sense that the different objective sound parameters analysed serve to explain the (dis)agreeableness of the soundscape when it is negative (noise pollution), but not when the soundscape is characterised by sounds (events) valued as positive.

If the reviewer considers it appropriate and of interest, the authors would be happy to include it in the text.

NOTE: Participants were assigned the objective sound parameters for the 30 minutes during which the interview or most of it was conducted.

Reviewer 2 Report

Structure of the text clearly describes the subject. The introduction shows successive publications that build the background of the problem from noise regulations to soudscape issues. The following chapters are structured correctly. The conclusions are interesting. Especially that despite the lack of a clear difference in the strength of the sounds, the qualitative change contributed to the improvement of users' reaction. Here, however, the question remains, how much is the influence of the sound of the fountain and how much is the influence of the attractive new architecture of the square.

Comments:

There were not enough people participating in the study to be statistically significant.

The problem that requires clarification is the relationship between the reviewed article and the one published by its authors in 2017. (Analysis of Field Data to Describe the Effect of Context (Acoustic and Non-Acoustic Factors) on Urban Soundscapes, Published: 10 February 2017, https://doi.org/10.3390/app7020173). The present article does not refer to it! Therefore, in the present article there is no reflection on and no reference to own research results. Particular attention should be paid to the differences in the presented data. It needs to be cleared up. E.g.: Tab.4 (2017)and Tab.2 (2022) shows different scores in LSC conditions. Comment needed.

The authors have put a lot of work into changing the content of their article, but sometimes it has proved too difficult. E.g.:

"Considering the acoustic levels and their variation in these particular acoustic environments, it was concluded that a dynamic threshold of 6.5 dB allows the detection of a number of events similar to the perception of the sound environment by the technician who was taking the measurement.”

“Considering the acoustic levels and their variation in these particular acoustic environments, it was concluded that a dynamic threshold of 6.5 dB would enable detection of a number of events similar to the perception of the sound environment experienced by the technician taking the measurement.”

If the article takes into account the above remarks and clearly highlights the new elements and their meaning, then it will be worth printing it.

Author Response

First of all, we would like to show you our gratitude for your dedication and time, as well as for their contributions and comments that will undoubtedly improve our work.

For see pont-by-point response to the reviewer 2´s commnets, please see the attachment "Response to reviewer 2_20220128.docx"

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper presents an application of the soundscape approach to an urban space in Bilbao, but I cannot say it represents a significant contribution to scientific literature or advancement in either theoretical or methodological aspects in soundscape studies. Indeed, the main conclusions (A-D) are now well-recognized by the environmental acoustics and soundscape communities. Methods for data collection do not seem to be in line with current standards and protocols.

The literature review part is quite scarce - a more in-depth review would have probably revealed the limited novelty of the work.

The study has not been apparently approved by any Review Ethics Board (this is incompatible with current journal policy).

The quality of figures and tables is low with several formatting problems.

Author Response

First of all, we would like to show you our gratitude for your dedication and time, as well as for their contributions and comments that will undoubtedly improve our work.

After, the authors we would like to ask you for more information that would help us authors to improve the content that the reviewer considers improvable, in relation to your valuations about significant contributions, literature review, or formatting problems with figures and tables.

In relation to significant contribution, for clarification, the authors consider that the innovation and contribution of the presented work lies in the integration of the soundscape perspective in an urban sustainable regeneration process, and the evaluation of its effects both at the sound environment, soundscape and landscape, as well as in well-being. and health of real users:

• Integration soundscape approach in the urban design of a process regeneration de una plaza, aimed at improving public perception (soundscape and landscape).
• Integration of psychological restauration concept in urban setting: improvement of wellbeing (acoustic and global comfort), and health (emotional, and stress).
• Collaborative design between local authorities, architects and acousticians (transdisciplinary team integrating social and environmental scientists).
• Citizen participation in the collaborative design (residents of the surrounding) and in the evaluation of places before and after intervention (real user of the place).

Points A-D of the conclusions are a detailed clarification of the relative contributions to each of the soundscape principles in our work.

The authors INVITE reviewer 3 to identify other studies that integrate all the aspects considered in the work under review whose sample was real user of the place (no students).

In relation with your comments "Methods for data collection do not seem to be in line with current standards and protocols", It is logic, because the studio that is presented in this paper was carried out between 2012 and 2014. At the end of this period (in 2014) only part 1 of the current ISO-2913 standards and protocols on Acoustic-Soundscape had been published. The part 1 is about Definition and Conceptual Framework. The current ISO-2913 standards and protocols on Soundscape about Data Collection and Reporting Requirements (Part 2), and Data Analysis (Part 3) became available later, in 2018 and 2019 respectively.

Regarding to Review Ethics Board, said that at the time the study described in this paper was carried out, it was not necessary that the study had been approved by any Review Ethics Board. As the text states (lines 303-308) at the beginning of the interview, the participants were asked for indirect or implicit consent to participate in the study. 

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

I accept the answer regarding, table 4 (2017) and table 2 (2022), but there are still other differences. Is it possible that the data for the same study could be so different? This difference must come from something. Are any of the data fictitious? For example:

LAeq 2012 - 2017(table 3)= 62,4, 2022(table 1)=64,3

LAeq 2014 – 2017(table 3)=64,9, 2022(table 1)=65,0

LAmax 1s 2012 – 2017(table 3)= 75,4, 2022(table 1)=79,3

LAmax 1s 2014 – 2017(table 3)= 74,2, 2022(table 1)=75,8

and other data there.

I believe that two articles on the same research with such different data without explaining the differences cannot be printed. The present article has a much developed method section, and this is valuable, but if the authors have no explanation for the differences indicated, the data may not be authentic. I still find it hard to accept this job. In discussion that problem should be clearly described. Any scientist doing similar research would like to compare his results with those obtained at Plaza General Latorre. Which of the datasets should he quote? Maybe both, but it has to be explained why both sets are different and relevant. The current article makes a good impression in terms of structure and content, but in spite of authors answer I don't know whether to believe the data from the 2017 or 2022 publications. The authors did not fully answer on my comments, so I cannot accept their work for publication without proper change. One of the articles seems to be bogus still, and this undermines the scientific level of the current work. In present atricle all differences should be clearly described, probably it is possible. After that etire text will be acccepted by me witout any comments because it is really interesting. All my doubts relate only to the aforementioned differences in the collected data. 

Author Response

We apologize to the reviewer and readers for not having properly explained the difference between the data in Table 1 of this work and those published in 2017.

• The data presented in Table 1 of this article shows the means of acoustic measurements during each interview with the participants. Thus, each participant was related with the acoustic values of the specific period in which their interview was conducted.
• On the other hand, Table 3 of 2017 presents the LAeq of the acoustic measurements carried out throughout the entire period in which the surveys were carried out. On that sense, in general, they are related to a longer period of time.

Considering this, and to avoid misunderstanding, the authors have considered that it is more appropriate that the LAeq values presented in table 1 in this article are the ones corresponding to the same times than the ones showed in article of the 2017. The appropriate changes in the text were done to accommodate this issue.

In addition, we have reviewed the rest of the data sets that are included in both publications. Some additional discrepancies were detected and have been corrected. The explanation of this modifications is presented in the following lines:

• In the pre and post percentages in relation to educational level: a) the percentage of secondary studies in the post phase did not include 2 cases that had been answered as “others” but corresponded to secondary vocational training; b) the percentages of university studies were wrong (mistake), since they were the same as those previously indicated in relation to secondary studies.
• In the pre and post percentages in relation to the employment situation: the percentages of the post phase are wrong, since they have been calculated without the XMISS values (4). The correct ones are from the 2017 publication, so we have corrected them in the new article version.

Other differences have also been found. These are related to the characteristics of the study carried out in the GLT plaza, where a) only one measurement point was established (in some places in the 2017 study there were two); b) 13 items of the soundscape scale appear (only 10 are presented in the 2017 study because the set of items was the same that was applied in the other nine places analysed); c) the measurement time in the morning was from 11:00 to 13:00 (while in the 2017 study in some cases it was extended until 13:30).

We hope that we have answered the questions raised by reviewer 2 appropriately. Beyond the corrections made in the text, if the reviewer considers it necessary to include in the manuscript any of the clarifications already mentioned, the authors will gladly do so.

We do apologise for these discrepancies and thank to the reviewer for his/her deep analysis that enrich the article in coherence.

Reviewer 3 Report

Thank you for your revised version, I appreciate the effort put in the response letter, but I feel still not convinced. 

I still think that after reading the paper the average scholar in this field does not learn anything particularly new that was not known before. Hence, my concern about novelty and contribution to knowledge remains. I thank you for your INVITE to identify other studies who approach similar themes in a similar way, but I would like to highlight that it is not the reviewers' job to prove the novelty of a work: that burden stays with the authors. Other than that, the reviewers simply express academic opinions on scientific merit. In any case, on top of my mind, of this example: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2210670720305837?via%3Dihub

Regarding the protocol, the authors say: "In relation with your comments "Methods for data collection do not seem to be in line with current standards and protocols", It is logic, because the studio that is presented in this paper was carried out between 2012 and 2014" and the standard for data collection was published in 2018. This indeed confirms that this work is obsolete and not novel - with a dataset that is basically 10 years old.

REagrding the ethics, it doesn't matter if it is not required in your country. The ethical review and approval is a requirement of the journal:

https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability/instructions#ethics

if you cannot provide it, you should publish probably somewhere else.

Author Response

The reference to works published is appreciated. We are aware of the activities and publications carried out by this research group whose contribution is undoubtedly valuable and of reference. Regarding this specific publication, one of the novelties of our article is to consider subjective criteria. This is considered as the basis of the soundscape to define actions to improve public space. In the case of Plaza General Latorre (GLT), positive sounds are introduced. This increase the sound levels but, since they are related with pleasant sound sources, there is an improvement in the perception of the sound environment (soundscape).

It is true that the database is 10 years old. However, given the difficulty of obtaining these data sets with real users of urban spaces, big periods of time could be required to gather this information (that is applicable for analysis). The age of the data does affect existing methodological references, as indicated by the reviewer. But we do not understand that this affects the conclusions obtained, which at the time of publication, can offer elements for discussion in the contexts of current methodological references.

It should be mentioned that, during the research there was not a previous consultancy to an ethics committee. Nevertheless, we consider that the journal requirements about ethics are met since one of the possible options is to refer to the national legislation to evaluate the need for ethics approval in this type of study, and Spanish legislation supports the position of the study. Additionally, to this, since the study does not consider any personal data collected, there are not specific needs from an ethics committee. This specific point has been noted in the article to inform to the readers.

Round 3

Reviewer 2 Report

Everything is clear now. Good job.